


Strange Locution

by ljs



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: AU, F/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-16
Updated: 2010-10-16
Packaged: 2017-10-12 17:31:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 25,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/127267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nominally post-Chosen, but we're going AU from here.</p><p>As Giles finds out, old books, ancestors, and spells -- not to mention Gilbert and Sullivan--can get a man in a great deal of trouble. Call it the grandfather effect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Rupert Giles, fifty-five, grey, and perhaps a little tired, had been long nagged by a recurring question: was it worse to be bored, lonely, or depressed?

The answer, he thought on this cloudy July morning, was – all three.

He scuffed at a stray twig on the pavement, kicked it aside, and sighed. A long London walk wasn't quite doing the trick of fighting those three problems.

He and Faith had just returned from a reconnaissance in Brighton, and she, Buffy, and the other Slayers were now off to battle the Goii demon wading in from the sea. He'd volunteered his own sword and the odd spell or two, of course, but there had been sweet Slayer condescension from all quarters. “No, Giles, you need to rest. No, Giles, we can handle it. You just...rest.” The unspoken followup was “old man.”

Another twig snapped under the press of his foot, and he had to remind himself to unclench his jaw.

He looked up at the surrounding buildings. Mayfair of a Sunday morning was quiet, grey, with unexpected shots of light in the oddest places. He didn't know how he'd got here... Audley Street, yes. His _pied a terre_ for London was in Kensington. He'd walked through Hyde Park, yes. Right.

Some impulse – some compulsion – had pulled him in this direction. It was as if magic lived here, as if all he had to do was reach out a hand or say a word.

He shoved his hands in his pockets. Then he rolled his shoulders up and back, which merely shifted the balance of tension, and began to walk again.

Could be worse, he thought. He could be in Cleveland.

In that Ohio city by the lake, he had even less place. After the fall of Sunnydale they'd tried to make him head of the New Council, which he had kindly but firmly rejected – what the fuck good was a midlife crisis if one didn't learn from it, after all, and he had learnt well how much he loathed administrative duties – and Cleveland was for the real Watchers, the ones with power. Not that Xander, or Wood, or Dawn wouldn't welcome him, but still.

Also, it was bloody _Cleveland_ , Rock and Roll Hall of Fame be damned.

He began to walk faster, toward an oddly sharp beam of light in the grey. He couldn't quite see where it was coming from.

His feet on the pavement struck hard and loud. It was quiet here – away from hotels, no shops open yet, a few older homes still inhabited by equally old moneyed folk. He didn't make a habit of walking through this part of London. Didn't make a habit of letting magic and warm sun draw him forward. He went anyway.

He thought of Ethan as he walked, and Jenny – parts of himself lost now in the greyness of death. And he thought, as he so often did, of Anya.

No one had known how he'd preceded Xander into that corridor and seen her body. No one had caught him grieving, then in the ruins of Sunnydale or in the intervening years here, but he had mourned, too hot and angry for tears.

Ethan had been his youth, dead in the prison they'd both earned. Jenny had been his idealism, dead at the hands of an impossibility, a contradiction resolved.

Anya had herself been impossibility, contradiction. Anya had been... promise. Paradise only touched once, paradise lost.

He absently licked his lips, seeking her taste from that one kiss they'd shared, seeking the taste of the too-strong cups of tea she'd made him in that last horrible year in Sunnydale. She'd been so kind in her own inimitable way. He'd always wanted to reach out to her, hold on to her strength -- or, all right, drag her off to a dark corner and shag her brains out --but he hadn't let himself. He couldn't remember why.

Regret made grief so much more bitter, somehow.

The sunbeam disappeared as he took that last step to catch it. Typical. He stopped anyway, rolled his shoulders again, looked up at the grey building in front of him.

Blue plaque. What did it say... **John Rupert Cavendish lived here 1860-1881**. **Bookseller, publisher, politician.**

“Dear God,” Giles said aloud. “Great-grandfather.”

He had Watcher heritage on both sides of his family. The Gileses, of course, had been Watchers back to the time of Henry V. His paternal grandmother, however, had been the daughter of this John Cavendish. He tried to remember the details of her life: born in 1881, actually; married Henry Giles and the Council, and while that Giles had become the head of the Cavendish publishing empire, she'd become a Watcher; at the advanced age of forty, gave birth to David, father of Rupert.

The sun briefly glittered on the blue plaque -- and on the discreet To Let sign in the first-floor window.

He shouldn't. It'd be locked anyway, and he'd given up breaking and entering last year after a dodgy moment in a vampire's lair in Clerkenwell, and it wouldn't be the same as all those years ago...

A glance left and right at the deserted street. Five steps up to the door, which opened soundlessly under his hand. Twenty steps inside, and up the staircase to the first floor. That door opened too.

“Compulsion and magic,” he muttered, “balderdash and chicanery,” and he went inside nevertheless.

It shouldn't be this light, suffused with old sun, he thought. He shouldn't be having these flashes of...not memory, no, but something like it. Recognition of what might have been here, before the chopping up of space and time.

He went forward into the next room. There would have been books here, he thought with a sudden, terrified certainty. He could almost smell the bindings and dust and tobacco. It had been a man's private study.

The panelling and shelves had been whitewashed, but he knew they would have been oak. He knew.

Recognition.

He blinked, and rubbed at his chin, and squinted. Empty whitewashed shelves, but there, a book. One lost, solitary book. Old, it looked like. Quarto, calf-bound. He couldn't quite make out the letters on the spine.

Boredom, loneliness, depression melted away under the power of the book.

“It couldn't hurt. Just a glance,” he said, each word echoing in the empty room. “Just a quick glance.”

And even as he went forward, he heard in his mind Anya saying sharply, “Isn't quickness implied in the word 'glance'? It's a silly thing to say.” Then, in his mind, he heard her saying the words she'd thrown at him during one of their many, many arguments, “Let me put it in your lingo, then. It's a strange locution.”

“It is _not_ ,” he said now, to himself and to his memory of her, and thus, thinking of her, he put his hand on the book.

It was a grimoire, he saw. Felt, in the barely contained power thrumming beneath his fingertips.

On the cover, in gilt script -- “'Tempus,'” he read aloud, the word oddly familiar on his tongue.

The word echoed in emptiness, in fullness. _Tempus tempus tempus_ \--

And the book slipped away, and the world disappeared, and he felt the brush of another body in the dark and heard a stentorian “Damn it all, man,” and the world flickered back, twilight and sooty and oil-lamped, a cigar smouldering on the table in front of him, the shelves beside him oak again and full of all manner of gold-edged leather-bound treasure.

The world stopped, and Rupert Giles found himself in a man's study. Nineteenth-century furnishings, by the dimly lit look of it. Air heavy with smoke.

“Fuckin' hell,” he muttered, just as the door to the study opened, and a woman in a long gown entered.

He blinked at her. Then, louder and more fervently, he said again, “Fuckin' _hell_!”

“Cousin John, I--” Anya began, before her brow furrowed in that adorable and annoying way he remembered so well. “What's happened to you?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A reunion in a study with a lost... well, we'll call her a friend.

Anyanka knew one thing, even as she asked the question. _This_ person was not John Cavendish, the disgusting man on whom vengeance was so necessary.

She pulled the door shut and considered him. He could pass for Cavendish in a dim light. Well-favoured, certainly, if a little worn down by age; greying hair like Cavendish, strong facial structure and thinnish, well-cut mouth like Cavendish. This mouth, however, was currently agape. In fact, the man looked somewhat as if a hansom cab had run over him: surprised and unsteady on his feet and possibly bruised. His really nice hazel-green eyes behind odd spectacles were wide and a little unfocused.

“Anya,” he said, in a voice deeper and warmer than Cavendish's.

She firmed her lips. Really -- “Do I know you, sir? And why are you in Cousin John's study?”

“I know very well you're not a cousin, Anya. Or-- wait, what year is this?” He began to scrabble through the papers on Cavendish's desk, muttering to himself.

D'Hoffryn's justice-demons did not admit to fear (or did not _often_ admit to it, even to themselves), but she felt a slight tremor she refused to name. He was so tall and broad-shouldered, and so offhanded with the potential of revealing her justice-identity, and so... She didn't want to define what he was.

Except that he was an intruder here. “You are an intruder here, sir!”

“You have no idea,” he said absently, then, as he looked at one of the papers, “1880. This says--” He looked up at her, and now those hazel-green eyes were far too intelligent and focused. “This is _1880_?” Then, slightly louder, “Anyanka!”

“Would you be quiet,” she hissed, although she was fairly certain that her client firstly was upstairs in the nursery for a while longer and secondly had little knowledge of the justice-arts, much as she needed them. “My name is Anya Jenkins, I'm Mrs Cavendish's second cousin--”

“No, you're Anyanka, and you're a vengeance demon,” he said. “And, oh dear, this must be 1880.” He sat down in Cavendish's desk chair suddenly and very hard. “Oh bloody fucking dear.”

She felt an unprofessional wave of sympathy for him – the poor man seemed overly well informed, certainly, but also baffled and tired. He didn't seem to be a burglar, either. Except she did need to make sure of another possibility: “Are you possibly escaped from an asylum?”

He laughed, leaned back, and closed his eyes. “No."

She came closer. He looked greyer close up, yet more handsome. The clothes, too, suggested not an asylum but displacement-- “Escaped from another dimension?”

“Another time. Er, same place. I wouldn't call it escape, perhaps, but more... kidnapping.” He opened his eyes again, which she found disturbing, because those eyes held all kinds of secrets.

But she did need to clarify. “I beg your pardon, but are you suggesting time travel? Because that's just a myth, much like the possibility of a kind, gentle bunny.”

This time his laughter had an edge of pain. “Oh, Anya, Anya, I have missed you.” Without warning he surged out of the chair. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't, but--” And then he swept her into a warm, lime-scented embrace. “Just for a moment,” he whispered. “Just for a moment.”

She should push away, she knew. Even if he weren't a madman (and on that topic she suspected he was telling the truth, his conversation seemed rational enough), he must be some kind of mage, and there were dimensional-temporal problems of epic proportions afoot. Also, he had to be related to the son of a whore Cavendish, and....

What the hell. She wrapped her arms around the man and enjoyed the moment and his perfectly placed shoulder. She found him strangely attractive, and of course she hadn't had sex since that job in the Passla dimension several months ago. But, standing in this position, she could feel the hum of all kinds of magic--

“No!” she announced, pushing back hard. “No hugging! I need to know who you are and how you got here, and this may well pose an ethical question I can't answer.”

“Vengeance-ethics, who'd have thought,” he murmured. His hands took their own sweet time sliding away from her torso, which she found infuriatingly arousing from a nameless vagrant mage unassociated with her current assignment.

“Justice, not vengeance, thank you. And while you might know me in the...future?”

“Future.”

“Yes, well, you might know me, but I don't know you. Your name, sir?”

“I don't know why I should be surprised you go around hugging strange men, but --” He stopped when she pointed a commanding finger at him.”Right, sorry. But if I tell you my name, that might affect what's to come. Mightn't it? This isn't really in my line. The theory of relativity, the grandfather paradox, er...Great-grandfather, actually. Hmm.” He pursed his lips, considering.

Anya thought this was so much gobblydygook. (Except not as amusing as the stage gobblydygook in the dimension of the same name.) “Enough of the incomprehensible babbling. Your _name_ , sir.”

“If only I'd listened all those years ago when Xander and Buffy tried to tell me the plot of that sodding Back to the Future film...” he muttered to himself.

She recalled his attention by the simple expedient of grabbing his jumper with both hands. “Now then, no more misdirection. Tell me your name--”

“Rank, and serial number,” he said on an odd laugh, and then covered her hands with his own. The warmth and sweetness of that touch was something else she didn't want to think about. But then, it wasn't any more helpful to look up into those deep, complicated eyes. His fingers moved on hers. “I'm, um, Rupert Giles.”

The name meant nothing to her. Yet 'Rupert' suited him – a strong Germano-British name meaning something about brightness and high honor, but also with connotations to her of masculine studies like this one, crimson and brown and fire-lit, pleasant to sit in when not occupied by vengeance-targets. Which reminded her: “That's John Cavendish's middle name. You said he's your... grandfather? Great-grandfather?”

“Er, yes. I think so.”

“He's a nasty man. Most of your sex are, true, but he's worse,” she said. “Unfaithful husband, for one – he's got several bastards, the oldest already in his twenties. He's making his second wife Amelia quite miserable, even while she's carrying a child. Vile to his women all around. And although I haven't caught him at it, I suspect dark magics are his game.”

“Lovely,” Rupert said dryly. “Just what I wanted to hear.” Then he seemed to disappear inside his head, cogitating, which Anyanka surmised he did quite often. “Magics, though... _Tempus_... What could he be doing?”

She slid out of his loosened hold, then snapped her fingers to recall his attention. “Yes, Rupert, that is the question. How did you get here?”

“Put my hand on a book,” he said. “One suspects that Great-Grandfather was casting a temporal spell at the same time, and something went wrong.”

“Of course one would suspect that,” Anyanka said with heavy irony. These Englishmen with their strange locutions...Before she could say anything else, however, there were footsteps in the hall. Damn it, the vengeance-plan was _not_ working at all.“Hide,” she said sharply. “Else Amelia will see you with me, and think you're John, and make the Wish he so richly deserves – except I can't grant a Wish in these circumstances, when she's misidentifying the target.”

“You can't?”

“No, of course not, it's _completely_ unethical.” She didn't know why a smile tugged at that well-cut mouth, but no time for that. “Get down,” she said, and pushed him onto the floor behind the desk just as the door opened.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conversations and a cigarillo.

There on the floor, trying to keep his head down, Giles considered the new bruises on his knees, the amazing reality of Anyanka, and the equally amazing reality of his great-grandmother Amelia in this very room.

He was having a very, very odd day, he thought, and tried not to sneeze or grab onto Anyanka's trailing, er, train. Not much room here behind the desk, actually.

“I thought I heard John,” his great-grandmother said again. It was a hesitant voice, one which seemed already wounded almost more than it could bear. “Were you--”

“Oh, no. I thought the same as you, but look! No Cousin John anywhere here!” Anyanka said. _That_ voice he had heard before – often when she was trying to convince an unwelcome Magic Box customer (a bad mage, a dark witch, an unfriendly demon) that the shop didn't have a slightly dodgy potion ingredient or spellbook which they in fact did carry. Generally the voice went with an airy wave at nothing.

The combination had rarely worked then, and it didn't work too well now. Footsteps came closer. “There's something... Is there something you're not telling me, Cousin Anya?”

He couldn't quite tell whether Great-grandmother wanted Anyanka to confirm or deny this. He could tell, however, that Great-grandmother was very much on the edge of her endurance. No wonder Anyanka thought a Wish was imminent.

But Anyanka said brightly, “No, of course not! He's just not here. Why, he seems to be absolutely elsewhere at the moment! Couldn't be farther away if, oh, he'd done a spell and travelled to another time!”

At this, Giles had to bite his lip very hard in order not to laugh, although the responsible part of him knew it was no laughing matter. It was just... Anya.

The swirl of her long skirt against his cheek, the rush of a lovely wave of jasmine perfume, sobered him. The way she had felt in his arms, familiar even after these years, the way jasmine had curled into his senses as it had done on that night in the Magic Box, the way she'd moved against him... Yes. Just Anya, even if she were Anyanka now.

Great-grandmother said, with an attempt at a laugh, “You do make the most astonishing comparisons, cousin. But I'll take your word.” A pause in which Giles could hear the passage of horses on the street outside, the drifting of hurt inside. When she spoke again, her voice was stronger. “Might you be able to help me with some of the arrangements for the party this evening? Tomorrow will be here soon, and I am... I am a little tired.”

“Of course you are, and of course I will,” Anya said warmly. “I was just looking for a particular list in the study – if you could go upstairs and wait for me? I'll be along directly.”

Great-grandmother murmured something Giles couldn't make out, and then there were retreating footsteps, and then the solid click of the door. He started to stand, but Anya pushed down on his head. “Let me lock the door first, please."

It was easier to do as she suggested (particularly since she had pushed very hard). He suddenly felt just as tired as Great-grandmother, and he hadn't even had lunch yet. Or, possibly, tea – it appeared to be almost evening here.

She was back almost immediately, her hands grabbing onto his and pulling. So very Anya, the push and then pull. So very Anya, the direct, “Well, Rupert, let's confer. We don't have much time.”

“Or I have too much,” he murmured, steadying himself. “A hundred and twenty-some-odd years of it.”

Her face fell into a familiar expression – not quite a frown, with flickers of that active mind working behind her sweetly sharp features – before she said, “I request a moratorium on stupid time-jokes.” He suppressed his instinctive wish to say 'right, no timey-wimey nonsense,' and silently cursed in absentia that bloody Andrew and his Doctor Who fetish. She continued, “Do you have any ideas about how to proceed? And be sure to keep your voice down.”

He looked around. He hadn't quite processed his surroundings: two walls of books, which made his mouth water; a beautiful oak file cabinet, which might bear investigating; a range of portraits on, and a long-case clock against, the wall with the door. One of the portraits, that of an eighteenth-century gouty Justice of the Peace, had hung above his grandmother's fireplace when he was a boy. He blinked away the memory, and looked down--

Cigar in the ashtray, just smouldering away into ash.

“He can't have been gone too long,” he said, and crushed the end of the cigar to stop the smoke.

“So you think he'll be back at once?” she said dubiously. “That seems an impractical use of energy, casting huge dark-magic spells in order to simply flash in and out of the future.”

“How do you know it's dark magic?”

“Because, as I have already explained to you, John Cavendish is a vile man. Didn't you hear Amelia's voice? How hopeless she is?”

“Well, yes--”

But Anya cut off his stumbling start at apology. “Tomorrow, for instance, there's a party here at the house. Society party, with some politicians, some mean-faced matrons, and some of his castoffs – none of _her_ friends. And he even dares to invite people like his oldest bastard, not that the young man knows what's what. But _Amelia_ knows, and aches for it.”

“Er--”

Anya had begun to pace, hands waving as she moved, skirt snapping at each turn. “At least Cavendish had the decency to marry off the first woman he impregnated – passed her off to a curate in one of his livings, helped the boy get a place at his school and then university, etcetera etcetera. Pratt, that's the name. At any rate, since then he's felt free to abandon succeeding women and bastards in order to cheat the next ones.” She stopped and glared at him. “He's already begun groping me. Amelia knows that, too. And the next time he does it is when the Wish will come.”

He raised his hand. “Anya, I faithfully promise I will not, er, grope my great-grandmother.”

She smiled at that, her vengeance-demeanour falling away. “A good promise, even if it contributes to my own professional difficulties. But what if you can't get back? What if you're trapped here?”

“I will think in only positive terms,” he said, despite the sudden rush of terror. “I will get back. And, no matter what happens, I shan't be sleeping with Great-grandmother.”

Her smile became laugh. “You are very confident! Or arrogant. They're often complementary traits.” Then, “Are you married, back where you came from?”

“No.”

“Have an intimate connection with someone?”

He smiled. So, so Anya.... “No.”

She seemed personally affronted. “Why ever not? You're handsome if no longer young, pleasant, seemingly not stupid or prone to hysterics when thrust into a difficult situation or unfamiliar time--”

She had no idea, he thought. And then he looked at her in the lamplight, remembered her in California sunlight, remembered a blood-stained corridor as the world fell in. He lost his words. Swallowing hard, he managed, “The right one always just seems to slip away.”

“So you don't settle for the almost-right one?” she pressed.

“No.” Then, before she could derail the conversation or break his heart any further, he said, “This hasn't really answered my question about the dark magic, however. And may I just say that I'd thought you didn't believe in the possibility of time-travel...”

“For the question of magic, I've seen a grimoire or two around here. Anyway, the same answer applies for both: if I exclude all other possibilities, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth,” she said briskly.

He laughed in surprised delight. “Thank you, Miss Holmes.” When she frowned at him, however, he made himself stop. “Right. Sorry. Um, well, perhaps, since I've found myself in a room full of books, including 'a grimoire or two,' I might start my investigations here?”

“That sounds reasonable,” she said. “If I lock you in to protect you from the servants, would you be able to escape in an emergency?”

His fingers involuntarily twitched: he did like a spot of lock-picking, now and then, and he knew a few spells... “Er, yes. But, Anya – I hate to ask, but might I have a cup of tea?”

“Oh, of course, so silly of me not to think of it. Dimensional teleportation is thirsty work, I'm sure temporal is too.” She moved forward and gave him a familiar, awkward pat on the shoulder. “Now, don't worry. I'll bring you your tea, and then we'll set to work, and all will be well.”

 _All will be well, and all will be well..._ Her eyes were so deep in the lamplight, he could lose himself even more. He took a step back, almost running into the wall. Steadying himself, he said, “Yes. Yes, thank you, Anya.”

“I'll return at once with the tea,” she said, and hurried to the door. After an amusingly theatrical peek outside – she always did have a knack for the big emphatic gesture, he thought – she slipped out.

The click of the lock was loud in the quiet room. It seemed emptier now without her. The feeling of loss was familiar.

But Giles squared his shoulders and said quietly to himself, “Right. 1880. Research.”

Then he reached for the box he'd spotted on Great-grandfather's desk – the same box which had sat on his father's desk for years – and flipped open the lid. Yes, the rich scent of tobacco poured out from the small, tidy piles of cigars and cigarillos.

Carefully he took out a cigarillo, prepared it, and then, with a match from the appropriate box, put flame to the end of it. Rolled it around, making sure all sides caught. Inhaled.

He hadn't smoked since the night Sunnydale fell, when he'd been grieving for Anya. It seemed only right to smoke one of his pillock great-grandfather's cigars now that he'd found her again.

He puffed on the cigar, then sat down in his great-grandfather's chair. Right. 1880. Research.

The first thing he saw after lifting the top layer of newsprint away was an open grimoire. _Tempus,_ it said.

The second thing he saw was a lease agreement. Audley Street. 2009.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hand-holding and surprises.

He looked... _right_... behind that desk, Anyanka thought. Seemed to be at home, his handsome self surrounded by books and papers, cigarillo in his hand, even though he was years away from where he was supposed to be. She envied that capability to make himself comfortable.

She so rarely felt at home. Well, never, except when doing her job, and she should return to that.

“Your tea, Rupert,” she said, and placed the cup in front of him.

“Mmm,” he said abstractedly, “thank you,” then flipped over the paper he was looking at.

She sighed, “Men.”

At that he blinked and looked up. “Oh, Anya! Anya, sorry. Er, thank you.” His free hand went to the teacup as if impelled, or as if to forestall a different gesture. He sipped, made a blissful face, sipped again. “Really, really, thank you. I needed that.”

She put her hand on his shoulder. “Good. Now, I should go to Amelia--”

“No, wait.” He put the teacup down before covering her hand with his own. He kept doing that – but he had a large, warm hand, very pleasant to hold. His flash of smile up at her was also pleasant, as was his attention to business: “Did you know that... er, well, of course you didn't, since the time travel came as a surprise to you, but... Look.”

The document he flipped back over was a legal one, although the typeface and materials seemed unfamiliar. She looked closer. “2009? He has a house in 2009?” Then, “Is that when you're from?”

“Yes. But that's not the real point,” he said. “It's _this_ house. What this suggests is that he's been to 2009 before, long enough to sign a lease – there's, as it were, a temporal pathway. Same room, different times. And this grimoire...” He pushed the book on top of the lease. “I haven't fully examined it, but it appears to be the twin of the one I touched--”

“Which pulled you here,” she finished. “So you think he was doing the spell when you touched it, and hence, transposition?”

“The perfect word. And, yes. The two grimoires must be the key.”

“And now you need to figure out why he's going back and forth,” she said. “I suspect it's a woman _there_ , too.” Before he could say anything, she gripped his hand harder. “However, if this grimoire is the key, then you can travel back if you want.”

He linked fingers, but looked away. “True, I... I've recovered magic, after a period where... Never mind. Thing is, Anya, I'm not sure I have enough power.”

“Or enough dark power. I don't expect he's using flowers and light to go back and forth,” she said. She didn't choose to examine why she found the news of his continued presence here to be cheerful.

“We don't know it's _dark_ magic,” he said in a voice full of aggravation, and then, surprisingly, laughed. “You always do this to me, Anya. Wind me up like this.”

“Well, I apologise for my future self, but I'm not apologising for this. Because I know him, Rupert.” Which reminded her -- “I need to go to Amelia, whom Cavendish has hurt so badly, and you need to explore the book, possibly books plural, further. Also, you need to put down the cigar before it burns your fingers.”

“Oh, hell,” he said, and dropped the cigarillo into the ashtray just before the ash reached his skin. Then he hesitated, looking down. “Er, you'll come back?”

“Of course. I can't do my job until this is sorted and you're...all right.” This was the truth, she thought, if not the _entire_ truth. “You have to let me go now, however.”

He blinked at their clasped hands, then released her. “Sorry. It's just that... I've missed you.”

“You said that before. But it was gratifying to hear, both times.” She smoothed his hair – which had perhaps become disarranged in the passage between 2009 and 1880 – and then moved away.

Before she shut the door on him, however, she looked back. He was already drinking his tea again and flipping through the grimoire, seeming very much at home. Lamplight shimmered on his newly stroked grey hair.

That attractive picture went with her as she climbed the stairs to Amelia's chambers.

The sound of Amelia's sobbing reached her in the corridor, however, at which she hurried her steps. One glance at the dimly lit room told her enough: her client lay on the bed, sobbing into a pillow. “Dear dear, what's the matter now?” she said bracingly, and thought for the first time in her long career, _Don't make a Wish yet don't make a Wish don't make a Wish...._

“Cousin,” Amelia said in a watery way, and pushed herself up, wiped at her tears, tried to compose herself. It wasn't a very successful attempt, but Anyanka honoured her for trying; she herself was a firm believer in the efficacy of effort. “Silly little thing to cry about, just...nothing. Weary, I suppose, and the little one on the way--”

“Perfectly understandable,” Anyanka said. “And I feel certain that you'll be a world better in the morning and be ready to finish party preparations if you get a good night's sleep now. Shall I call Bessy to help you to bed?”

“No, no.” Amelia's smile was truly pathetic – scorned woman, yes. “I mean, yes, I'll retire now. No, I don't require Bessy's assistance. I rather want to be alone.” She rooted around on her nightstand for a moment, however, and then held out a few sheets of paper. “I had been looking over the guest list, but... Could you keep this until tomorrow morning?”

Anyanka looked down at the top sheet. Yes, there was the offending bastard's name in Cavendish's handwriting – _William Pratt._ No wonder that the poor woman was recalled to a sense of all her husband's injustices: not the young man himself, but what he represented, including that Cavendish had forced on her this knowledge. “I''l take charge of it, cousin, and we'll start afresh tomorrow.” She kissed her client's cheek, tasted salt. It was a bitter tear indeed. “Yes, we'll sort everything tomorrow. You rest and recover now.”

“Thank you, Anya.” Amelia pressed her hand, but kept her eyes averted. “And a good night to you. I do so value your company.”

These were not words Anyanka heard very often, although Rupert too had expressed a similar kind thought with his talk of missing her. It warmed her as she left the room and began to descend the stairs.

The house was quiet: her footsteps disappearing into the carpet, the servants retired or on their night off. She could hear the carriages outside, hear the settling of this fine house inside--

And a thud. She distinctly heard a thud, and it emanated from the study.

She descended the rest of the steps at a run. The door to the study was shut, just as she'd left it, and still locked. As she fumbled for the key, she heard a muttered, “You shouldn't have... I need more time, damn it,” and she felt a shiver of power in the air. Was Rupert already trying out the spell without her?

She forced the door open, then stopped abruptly on the threshold.

Lamplight and smoke, just as when she'd left him, but papers were in disarray on the desk.

And Rupert lay on the floor, with blood on his temple.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unwelcome inheritances, welcome comfort.

Dear God, his head hurt. Still --

“I'll do it, thank you,” Giles said crossly, and took the dampened handkerchief away from Anya so that he might tend to himself.

“You will not. You appear to be dizzy and achy, in addition to still bleeding,” she said, and yanked the cloth out of his hand. “Now close your eyes and be quiet while I tend to this.”

He had several excellent counter-arguments to this plan, but... his head really did hurt. At the first touch of soft cotton, he did close his eyes and let her stanch the blood.

She'd done this for him once or twice before, back in Sunnydale when he'd had patrol-injuries. She had the most surprisingly gentle, soothing fingers. The touch was as much of a balm as whatever herbal stuff she'd put on the cloth.

Then she leaned in closer in order to work. When she balanced herself by placing her other hand on his thigh, 'soothing' was no longer the adjective he'd give to her touch.

As he woozily contemplated various behaviours which were a million miles from propriety –starting with pushing her back against the settee, unbuttoning the dozen or more buttons on her high-necked blouse, and then tracking the places she'd dabbed on that lovely jasmine scent– she said, “Now then, Rupert. Why did I find you on the floor, bleeding?”

“I thought I was supposed to be quiet.”

Just a bit vengeful, she pressed into his wound with the cloth.

He winced before opening his eyes and smiling. “I should have known better than to provoke you,” he murmured, then to her, “I'm not entirely sure, except that Great-grandfather came back. And, er, left. Teleported out.”

“Did you fall down because of the concussion of magic forces? Because time-travel must require some fairly powerful magic.” She put aside the cloth and picked up a strip of gauze. “Now hold still while you talk to me.”

“Please don't say 'concussion' around me, Anya. It's all too apt.” He let her arrange the gauze before he added, “Er, right, your question. Great-grandfather arrived with very little fanfare – just a sort of vibration in the grimoire, and a shimmer in the air, a dimming of the lights, and then boom.”

“And?” She then picked up a long strip of cloth and folded it over.

“And, um, I said 'What the hell' and he hit me with the cigar box. Edge caught me on the forehead. I grabbed his wrist, and saw a strange marking under his cuff – couldn't see all of it – but then he said 'You shouldn't be here, man,' and shoved at me. I got a punch in, but he had the advantage of surprise and, well, not bleeding.”

She began to wind the cloth around his head – oh, right, a headband to hold the gauze in place. They wouldn't have sticking-plaster yet.... His medical ponderings were cut short by her, “And then you fell down. Well, that's understandable. Did you hear what he said after that? At least I'm assuming you didn't say anything...”

“Just several curses in my head.” He smiled again. Painfully. “What did he say?”

“Something like 'You shouldn't have. I need more time.'” She knotted the band, then moved back to assess her work. “Yes, that should hold for a bit. Anyway, Rupert, for a moment I thought _you'd_ spoken. Which means that at a distance your voice can pass for his even though your voice is nicer, which means that you'll be able to answer servants' questions and not reveal yourself.”

“Well--”

“Because it looks as if you're here for the duration, until he chooses to come back.” She blew out a breath, even as she put both hands on his thighs. “This might become tricky to manage.”

“An understatement,” he said – and then his stomach rumbled, very loudly. “Sorry. I haven't eaten in a while.”

“Right. Food, and medicinal brandy,” she announced. “And then you'll need to sleep it and the injury away.”

The food sounded good. Brandy sounded better. Still, he eyed the plush red settee dubiously. “Thank you, Anya, but I don't think I'll fit on that. To sleep, I mean. I'll need a cushion or two for the floor...”

She looked him up and down, which, coupled with her tightened hands on his legs, made him uncomfortable on several levels. “You _are_ a big one,” she said in a faintly approving way. “You're probably right. And despite the similarity in voices, I don't think Amelia will be fooled if she gets a good look at you – I think you shouldn't stay in Cavendish's bedchamber.”

“I'd think not,” he agreed. “I need to keep right away from Great-grandmother. Wishes, and everything.”

“Well, then,” she said briskly, “Looks like you're sleeping with me. My bed's more comfortable than the floor.” At his involuntary jolt, she patted his legs in what was too bloody near to a caress for his liking. “You can be trusted, can't you?”

This was an uncharacteristically vulnerable statement from her, he thought. And her eyes were so wide, her lips parted temptingly... “Er, yes. Yes, you can trust me.” Damn it all to hell and back.

She tilted her head to consider him further. “It's odd and very unusual for me, because after all you're a man, but I already do. Trust you, I mean.”

“Lovely. Brilliant.” He made himself smile. “And, um, what about that food and brandy?”

After one last caress, she was up on her feet. So fast, Anya always was... “Wait here,” she said, and then left.

'Wait here.' He felt as if he'd been waiting for something unnameable forever. Then he remembered again the night Sunnydale fell. He'd walked out of the Ventura motel where the survivors had sought refuge, and bought a pack of cigarettes from a nearby shop. And then he'd stood in the car park, smoking, trying not to weep from the sheer bloody futility of it all, trying not to listen for her footstep or her voice haranguing him.

Somehow, he now realised, he'd kept right on waiting for her. He'd begun waiting, God alone knew for what, after that enspelled kiss years ago. Years to come.

Pushing aside his useless thoughts, he struggled to his feet. Yes, a little dizzy, but not too bad. He crossed back to the desk and picked up the grimoire. _Tempus_ , it read.

When he shook it, the book fell open at an early page. _To summon and bind Chronos to your will, you must perform all appropriate demonic sacrifice. Blood will be first and last._

Then he read further, just a paragraph or two, and saw the illustration of the binding tattoo required – just like the marking he'd glimpsed on Great-grandfather's wrist.

“Oh, fucking hell,” Giles muttered. “He raised a demon to do it.”

“What?” Anya said, too close. He looked up. She was back, and already setting a tray on the desk, but her eyebrows were lifted. “What about a demon?”

“Great-grandfather raised one, apparently. In order to time-travel.” _Blood will be first and last_ : Giles thought this a bitter irony. Great-grandfather seemed to have passed down some unsavoury traits, indeed.

“Let me see. But first, this.” Her fingertips lingered sweetly on his skin as she gave him a glass. “Have a drink, Rupert.”

He'd never needed a drink more.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Confidences, brandy, and bedclothes, "tarantara."

She chose one of the last bits of cheese off the plate she held for them both, and before eating, said, “Well, Rupert. What have you found about Chronos?”

Rupert didn't answer. Lost in that grimoire of which he'd only given her a glimpse, making deeply annoying sounds of interest and dismay--

“Share, if you would,” she said, and kicked him gently on the shin.

“Bloody--” He looked at her before finishing his swearing. His glasses had slipped down on his nose, which meant that his hazel-green eyes were unshaded and also attractively fierce. “Anya, do _not_ kick me.”

She popped the cheese in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, then said, “Only when necessary. Now, what have you found about this demon you've been researching? This demon I've never heard of, despite a wide social experience?”

His eyes narrowed, and a thrill coursed up her spine. He did have some strong magic of his own, she felt sure, even if he couldn't summon up time-travel on his own, and they were sitting quite close together on this settee, close enough to share body heat.... But he merely sighed, “Christ, this is so typical of you,” and then tossed back the last of his brandy in what she considered a theatrically disgusted way.

She took this opportunity to set aside the plate and grab the book out of his slackened grasp. The page was open to a historical overview, which she scanned quickly. Although the details were presented by this writer as a myth, they were clear: Dorican demon (specialist in portals) altered by an English mage some hundred years ago, by the expedient use of faerie blood and some nasty language. Usually untethered and therefore harmless, smoke and shade passing through time, but once called and bound, he was a slave until the owner died. Which, according to this--

“Rupert,” she demanded, “When will your great-grandfather die?”

He stood, and then went to the desk. “I don't remember. I've been trying to recall, but...” He disarranged the papers on the desk aimlessly, as if to look for the 2009 lease which they'd already discovered to be missing – obviously Cavendish's return had been to collect it.

“But this reports that the mage who binds Chronos dies within a year of his own time. Time-travel being as hard on the body as it is,” she said.

“Yes.” With his back to her, he walked to the bookshelves. Instead of searching, however, he put his hands on the shelves and leaned in heavily – almost, indeed, sagging against them.

Despite his passing displays of irritation and his stupid insistence on already removing the bandaging job she'd done so carefully -- “I'm not bleeding anymore,” he'd muttered -- the poor man must be suffering himself from the same time-travelling exhaustion. Before she took care of him, however, she had to remark, “It seems extremely out-of-character for that horrible Cavendish to choose such a deadly pastime.”

“Perhaps he thought he could beat the curse of it,” he said. His voice rang with personal experience.

She rose. After setting aside the book, she went to him and rested her hands on his back. He startled – she could feel the tensing of his muscles under her fingers – but didn't otherwise move. “So, Rupert,” she said, “I'd guess you've raised a few demons in your time, too. Thought you could beat the odds of failure, did you?”

“Yes.” The word was heavy: sad, she thought, and bitter. “And others died because of it.”

"Oh." She rubbed his back soothingly (although his increased tension suggested her efforts weren't working). Often it was worse for someone else to suffer for another's wrongdoing. D'Hoffryn often recommended this as a tactic for vengeance-work – guilt being such a weight – although she personally felt this unjust, and therefore didn't use it.

He shuddered once, then turned around. “Right. Er, thank you, Anya. For the, um, comfort.”

He _was_ a big one, as she'd noted earlier – not just tall, but also solid. Her own preference was for tall, broad men, which his close proximity reminded her with some force. But there were shadows like bruises under his eyes, and he looked rather drawn.

“Well, then,” she said brightly, “Now that the brandy and light meal are gone, time for bed.”

His laugh was almost a groan.

She made him stay in the study while she took the tray with the remains of their supper back to the kitchen: Mrs Holland the housekeeper kept a watchful eye on all tableware and would notice if anything were missing. The house was even quieter than before, however. It was as if she and Rupert were alone here.

When she got back, he was reading the grimoire again – but he looked up at once. “Anya, I've been thinking. I might just as well stay here tonight, get in some research--”

“No. Upstairs,” she said, “preferably before you fall down. Let's go...” She considered, then said, “I think we can go up without the use of a veiling spell. No servants, and they may well have to get used to seeing you, regardless.”

“But -- Oh, all right,” he said. Grumbled, actually. She'd noticed he had a tendency toward oddly charming petulance.

“Come along,” she said, and captured his arm.

The trip upstairs was uneventful: lamps were low, no unwelcome household member stirred, and they kept their footsteps soft. The only possible odd thing was that when they crossed the landing, she noticed he had an absent smile on his face, and the rest of the way he hummed softly (and just as absently) under his breath. She vaguely recognised the tune, but couldn't think of its origin right then.

She'd have told him again to be quiet, but his voice even when _pianissimo_ was just lovely. She suspected that she would be very fond of it in their future. Rupert's past. Whatever.

Once in the corridor, she showed him to the bathroom ( _all_ the modern conveniences, including the latest-model water closet situated within – Cavendish didn't skimp on his personal comfort). “You wash up,” she whispered, “and after I steal a few of your great-grandfather's night-things, I'll pass them to you.”

He looked as if he'd protest, but then went inside. The music stopped when he shut the door, which depressed her for no good reason.

The maids had left a lamp burning. In its light Anya found it quite easy to pull a pair of those newfangled pyjamas and a robe out of Cavendish's wardrobe. Once they were in her hands, she had the sudden fear they wouldn't fit Rupert, who was at the least taller if not necessarily heavier. No help for it, however.

When she knocked softly on the bathroom door, he was there at once to whisk the clothes out of her hand. A murmured thank-you made it through the door he closed immediately.

While he was thus occupied, she decided to change for bed herself. She went down the hall, two doors down, and, while leaving her door ajar so that her own lamp might shine a path if Rupert finished early, she shed her own shoes, stockings, shirt, and skirt. Then, with a sigh of relief, she sat to work on her corset (hideous things, corsets, like instruments of vengeance) before she took off her petticoats. It was tricky tonight, but she managed.

When it fell to the floor, she rolled her shoulders in release --

“Oh God,” came Rupert's choked voice from behind her.

With an arm across her bare breasts for human propriety's sake, she looked over her shoulder. He stood in the doorway, tall and broad and handsome: ankles showing because of the ill-fitting pyjama bottom; nicely muscled albeit slightly silvered chest revealed through the unbuttoned pyjama top and unfastened robe. His folded clothes were perilously near slipping from his hand.

“Take care, Rupert, don't let those fall,” she said, then turned around and without haste pulled her nightgown over her body. She then removed her petticoats without displaying herself to him.

It struck her as she stepped out of the petticoats that she really rather wanted to display herself to him, wanted to send her hands travelling beneath his own open garments to warm them on his skin... But sex was impractical at the moment. He had had a hard day, after all.

He was still standing in the doorway when she turned around.

“Well, Rupert, come in. Indeed, why not get into bed – I'll be back at once,” she said softly.

“Oh God,” he said again. Shuddered once, as he'd done under her hands. He stepped aside to let her pass, however. She smelled lime again – Cavendish's soap, but deliciously different on him.

As she splashed her face after her ablutions, however, she remembered that she'd left her petticoats on the floor. She hoped he hadn't found her untidiness off-putting.

The lamp was turned down when she came back to her bedroom. Rupert, obeying her instructions, was taking up a great deal of her bed, understandably enough as it was rather small and he was rather large – but he'd turned his face toward the far wall. Asleep already, perhaps.

After locking her door and putting away her clothes, she sat at her table to brush out her hair for the night: one hundred strokes faithfully, no matter what strange dimension or situation she found herself in. As the brush went through her hair, she thought involuntarily of Rupert's nice long fingers and what they might feel like, separating the strands and dipping down...

No, she told herself. He had had a hard day.

When she turned down the lamp and got into bed, however, he was clearly awake – lying somewhat rigidly, closer to the far edge. His body heat had warmed her side of the mattress; she found herself sinking into its pleasantness. He was very, very near.

“Relax,” she whispered.

He cleared his throat, then chuckled almost noiselessly. “Just, er, preparing myself for your Wagnerian snoring.”

“I do not snore.” Under the covers, she hit him in a friendly way. But it made her think -- “You know, _allegedly_ , that I snore? Are we... have we been... lovers, Rupert?”

“No.” His whole body was tense. “We were colleagues, Anya. And friends, although, um, not as close as I would wish.”

"Don't wish,” she said automatically. Then, “Well, despite your insult I hope you have a good night's sleep. We'll sort this out tomorrow, I promise.” On an impulse, she leaned over and kissed his ear. Which was pierced, interestingly enough.

“Christ,” he muttered, and then rolled over onto his stomach and buried his face in the pillow. Muffled: “Good night, Anya.”

“Good night, Rupert.”

As she drifted toward sleep, however, it came to her what air he had been humming earlier – it was from that clever musicale of Mr Gilbert's and Mr Sullivan's which she'd seen with Amelia, The Pirates of Penzance. “With Cat-Like Tread” was the extremely appropriate title of the song.

“You're so funny, Rupert,” she whispered, and snuggled closer to him. “' _Tarantara_.'”

She fell asleep more easily than she had in centuries.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The next morning, with inconvenient wakings and a surprise morning caller.

He'd had this dream more than once. He sank into its familiarity with a grateful sigh: Anya in his bed and in his arms, the scent of jasmine on her skin, the tips of her nails on his bare back. Ah yes, he'd always liked the move from contentment to rough-and-tumble, back to contentment. He hadn't dreamed the actual sex yet, so that treat should be next...

When those nails pressed in, he muttered a protest and burrowed closer. “In good time, darling.”

“Rupert,” she said, quiet but firm, “get up.”

“Am up, believe me.” Eyes still closed, he rubbed his cheek against her -- Shoulder? No, breast, how delightful. This dream was so much more real than the usual ones--

And sharp little teeth bit his pierced ear, at which he realized he was awake, and remembered where and when he was.

“Anya, oh Christ, I'm sorry,” he said, trying to blink himself to reality, trying to pull away.

But she kept hold of him. She always had been stronger than she looked, and here in the pre-dawn light, she looked impossibly tousled, fragile, appealing... “You don't have to shy like a frightened horse, Rupert. I just thought you should wake before the household does, so you might bathe and dress yourself, then go downstairs and hide in the study.” She smiled at him. “This is a great sacrifice on my part, too, as I can imagine we could have a lovely morning romp."

Her hand slid around from his back – his open pyjama top was somehow tangled around his chest – and down to cup his half-hard cock through the thin cotton of the pyjama bottoms, then lifted away.

He wasn't sure if he moaned because she'd touched him or because she'd stopped.

“A _great_ sacrifice,” she said briskly, before butterfly-kissing the ear she'd bitten. “Unfortunately, we don't have time to tarry.” She did let him go then. With a flash of bare legs, she was up and out of the bed.

He closed his eyes so that he couldn't see the fall of her nightgown, see her lifting her hair off her neck, see that much-missed thoughtful pout. He could still hear, however, as she murmured, “Yes, now to business. Just in case... you should be able to wear one of Cavendish's coats if you don't button it, and I think Amelia said something about an extra-large shirt she hadn't sent back to the tailor's yet. Your own trousers and boots will have to do.” Then a pillow fell on his head. “I'll return at once with the necessary clothing, Rupert, but you _do_ have to sit up.”

He didn't push the pillow off his face until her light footsteps faded.

It was quiet here. Faint sound of horses in the street below, rather than cars; faint sound of the household stirring, rather than the solitary waking Giles usually had. Great-grandfather did live in a different world, he thought.

He didn't know what day of the week it was -- if it were Monday here, after his eventful Sunday. He didn't know how he could manage expectations, he never had...

“Anya,” he said as she padded back through the door with her armful of clothes, “what day is it? Must we come up with an excuse for Cavendish not to go to the office?”

“Yes. Yes indeed.” She gently kicked the door shut with her heel before coming closer. “It's Wednesday. Tonight is the usual Wednesday evening gathering, you see; the Cavendishes hold one every month. A wider variety of people coming through than at their usual affairs...” She frowned, and dropped the clothes on the bed. “You're quite right to worry, however. Shall we say that you're not feeling well?”

“Why wouldn't I stay in bed, then?”

“Because you are an arrogant and strange man,” she said. At his grimace, she added, “Cavendish is, I mean.”

“You've said the same of me before,” he muttered, thinking of one noteworthy Magic Box argument over a question of mandrake roots. “Shouted it, rather.”

"I dare say," she said with an adorably haughty sniff. “Good. It will make the deception easier if we strike our line from the truth.”

As he grinned at her, she grinned back, and his heart broke just a little.

Her own smile dimmed. She began to say something, then thought better of it. “Bathroom,” she said, and pointed. “I recommend you hurry.”

He took her recommendation. Once locked inside, he leaned against the door and exhaled as if he'd been running. Then he devoted himself to the fastest wash-and-brushup he could manage. Thank whatever gods there were that Great-grandfather didn't fuss enough over his appearance to require a valet.

As he pulled on his trousers near the end of the process, however, there came a tap on the door. “Yes?” he answered without thinking.

“John? John, you are home?” said Great-grandmother on the other side. She didn't sound at all happy. “Where did you sleep? Your bed hasn't been touched.”

Giles thought three things at once: he had no idea what kind of relationship his great-grandparents had, whether they communicated with endearments or chilly silence or foulness; he had to speak carefully in order not to trigger a Wish; he needed Anya to save him.

And then, as if summoned, her voice came. “Cousin Amelia, has Cousin John not said? He passed the night downstairs, thinks he might be ill. And so he wishes to spend today secluded in his study, with as few attendants as possible. We'll need to send a message to the Cavendish House office, so that they don't expect him.” A familiar Anya-laugh. “He's so strange and arrogant, isn't he?”

Giles pressed his lips together so that an involuntary indignant comment – or laugh -- wouldn't escape.

“How do you know his plans?” Great-grandmother said, in wholly justified suspicion.

“Because he knocked first on my door and gave me the orders,” Anya said. “He didn't want to disturb you in your condition – _did_ you, Cousin John?”

“Er, no.” Holy God. With a not hugely convincing attempt at huskiness, he added, “Do you go on, my dear. Cousin Anya has everything well in hand.” And then he thought of her hand sliding down his stomach, and... Fucking hell, if only his brain would stop giving him these sexually charged images, he'd be a much happier time-traveller.

Great-grandmother murmured something that sounded all too close to a sob before he heard a rustle of skirts moving away. Then, soft but irritated, Anya whispered, “You called her 'my dear'! He never calls her anything of the sort, she'll be on the watch now.”

“Well, how was I to know,” he hissed back. “Just... hang on, I'm almost done.”

Socks, boots, coat, and tie went on faster than he'd ever managed before. Then he opened the door--

And her hand went to his tie, caught, and pulled him off-balance. “No time to tarry,” she said, already dragging him down the corridor, then, “Do you know a spell to grow sideburns? Because Cavendish has rather nice ones, and you're all shorn.”

He struggled to keep up. “Of course I don't know any such spell.”

Her robe snapping in their haste, she said crossly, “How rarely mages know what is required.”

“How rarely any bloody mage would require that particular spell, you might better say,” he said just as crossly.

"Never mind." They reached the staircase, and she all but pushed him down the first steps. “If you hurry, you should be able to take refuge in the study without alerting too many servants,” she said. “Once I'm dressed, I'll bring you your tea and perhaps some toast.”

“As much of both as you can arrange, Anya, thank you. And, um, sorry.” He told himself he was an idiot to feel bereft when she let go. He told himself to keep moving.

But he looked back over his shoulder to see her delightful smile. “Go on then, Pirate King,” she said. “'Tarantara.'”

He sighed, and continued. It wasn't until he reached the landing that he remembered his humming “On Cat-like Tread” the night before. He was hard-put to keep back a chuckle of his own, and he walked cat-like enough to avoid the servants who he could tell had begun their day.

The study smelled of old cigar smoke. Despite the morning chill, Giles opened the curtains and windows enough for light and air. “Not that it's all that much fresher outside,” he said to himself at the first taste of smoggy morning.

Behind him, papers fluttered in a light breeze. He turned to catch them, sat down at the desk, then stopped short.

A note lay on top of the _Tempus_ grimoire. In bold, dark cursive, it read:

 **To the traveller who has gone where he shouldn't,**  
 **Midnight tonight, here, your hand on the book. Do not fail. Also --take care, you fool, and STOP CHANGING THINGS.**  
It was signed **JRC**.

Giles was still staring at the note when Anya burst in, carrying a tray. He vaguely registered her kicking the door shut, he vaguely caught a whiff of sausage. But his attention was focussed on the ramifications of Great-grandfather's words.

What had he already changed? What traps might he spring between now and midnight? And worse, his mind whispered, what would he _want_ to change?

“What are you looking at?” Anya said, and placed the tray just on the other side of the grimoire and note. “Wait – is that new?”

"Yes. Apparently Great-grandfather has made another return trip. I should have stayed down here last night after all." Giles reached for the teapot, and cursed silently his shaking hand.

“I'll do that,” Anya said. Her pouring was deft and fast, as he might have expected. “Sugar? Milk?”

“Black, thank you.” He'd never needed a cup of tea more.

As he drank, then, she scrutinized the note. “This whole business makes no sense. Midnight, yes? An occult time, certainly, but that hasn't seemed to make much difference to him before now. And suddenly to be concerned about change, when clearly that was what he was about...” She looked up. “Rupert, are you well?”

He was lost in time, he walked blind through destiny and danger, and he only had sixteen or so hours with her before once more he'd be alone. “Er, yes, of course. Fine.”

“Liar.” She circled the desk and came up behind him. Before he could get away, she put her hands on his shoulders and began a strong, steady massage. “Don't worry so much, Rupert, regardless of cryptic notes.”

He let himself sink into her touch. “How can I not?” he made himself say, instead of moaning when she hit an especially tight muscle. “I've already put a foot wrong with Great-grandmother. And now, a whole day's worth of mistakes might lie ahead--”

“Don't borrow trouble either.” When she dug her thumb into the most painful spot, he almost came out of his shoes. She kept pressing. “You do that a great deal, don't you? You carry a world of trouble in your shoulders, and I assume not all of it is yours.”

“No. It is.”

“Poor dear Rupert. You're being ridiculously brooding.” She made one last pass before lifting her hands. “I'll try to make today as easy for you as I can. Because I need to be able to complete my job, of course, but also because I like you a great deal.” She lightly kissed the top of his head.

He couldn't tell her how suddenly and desperately cold he felt.

"Now eat your breakfast," she instructed. “I'll keep as many people away as I can.”

When the door shut behind her, he forced himself to pay attention to the tray. She'd brought him a bounty of food – sausage, yes, and eggs and toast and gentleman's relish. “Bless you, Anya,” he murmured.

As he ate, however, he also explored the top of the desk. The note he set aside after five minutes' fruitless inspection for hidden answers; the various papers on Cavendish House publishing matters he set aside as well. Then, after he'd put his napkin on his empty plate, he found an appointment book. This of course would have been more helpful if he'd known the actual month and date. Still, he took a guess at the particular Wednesday it was...

A light day, it seemed. The evening open house which Anya had mentioned; an appointment with that William Pratt fellow later this morning, marked **private** in Great-grandfather's blackest hand. Giles made a mental note to make sure Anya cancelled the appointment, and then turned back to the grimoire.

Before he'd gone beyond the first five pages of theory and practice of temporal magic, however, the hallway outside erupted in much more noise than the usual passage of servants could account for. He could hear Anya saying in her most strident tones something about appointments and time of day, and he could hear someone else, a male voice he almost thought he recognised.

“You are not to go in there, sir,” Anya said, sharp enough to wound even at this distance. “Mr Cavendish is unwell.”

“But I need to see him, it's important,” the male voice said, and the study door opened.

The man who entered was young, Giles judged. Untidy brown curls, slightly untidy suit on a slight frame. Giles felt the oddest sense of... familiarity and disappointment.

Anya was hot on the man's heels. “Cousin John,” she snapped, “Mr William Pratt _insists_ on seeing you despite being told repeatedly that you are not receiving.”

William. Familiarity and disappointment.

Spike.

“Oh God, no,” Giles said.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation with Mr William Pratt.

Anyanka couldn't see details of Rupert's face – he was seated at Cavendish's desk, with light coming from behind him – but his slumped shoulders did not suggest happiness at this intrusion, even before he called on his God. (Which he did rather a lot. She wouldn't have thought him so religious, to be honest.)

Before she could take action, however, Mr Pratt said with somewhat shaky bravado, “I do apologise, sir. But... it is a matter of some importance. Two matters, really.”

Rupert covered the lower half of his face with his hand, which gesture conveyed thoughtfulness but actually suggested to Anyanka's eyes that he wanted to hide further. “I beg your pardon, Mr, er, Pratt. I'm not well enough--”

Mr Pratt took a step forward. “This needn't take long, sir. I was just... have you read my manuscript of poems yet and decided on, um, perhaps, publication?”

“Manuscript. Of poems.” Rupert's voice had become very unsteady. Surely the stupid man wasn't laughing behind his hand, Anyanka thought...No. Not when he might be discovered at any moment.

“Yes, sir. Ballads and odes, you know,” Mr Pratt said helpfully. “The collection I've entitled _Evanescence and Innocence_.”

“ _Evanescence and Innocence_...” Rupert repeated, in a slightly higher voice.

She sighed. She had been quite mistaken: Rupert was now doing a remarkably poor job of hiding inappropriate laughter, and Mr Pratt (who was blind, apparently, but not completely stupid) was bristling. Time for her to step in -- “Don't you see, Mr Pratt? Cousin John is so unwell that he cannot even remember reading your work, and that's _not like him_.” The emphasis she placed on this last phrase was not, of course, for Mr Pratt's benefit.

Rupert turned the laugh into a more reasonable cough. “Right. Yes. Quite unwell, Mr Pratt. We must reschedule.” He rose at that – Anyanka had no idea why – and turned toward the window. After pulling the curtain open wider so that the morning spilled into the room – Anyanka had less idea why he would risk exposure this way – he looked over his shoulder. “Do come back tomorrow.”

“But to the Cavendish House office,” Anyanka put in. “Because even if Mr Cavendish hasn't made it back, um, _from illness_ , there will be others in the firm who might be able to deal better--”

“But there aren't. Mr Cavendish has no private secretary at the moment,” Mr Pratt said. A shaft of sun from the uncurtained aperture touched him, lighting him enough to show the force of Rupert's rebuke, but he twitched the hem of his coat as if to shake off sunlight and discomfort. “Which, of course, sir, is the second matter. You had tentatively offered me the position, and... well, sir, my heart is in my poetry. But if that dream is to die an inglorious death --”

“Oh, God,” Rupert whispered, and now he wasn't laughing at all.

Mr Pratt set his shoulders. “Yes, if that dream is to die, then I must seek employment. There is... there is a woman in the case.”

At this, Anyanka took her cue – because she knew the woman in question, and it was not exactly a woman on whom the idiot boy had set his sights. Clasping Mr Pratt's arm in her most forceful way, she said, “I don't know how many times we must say it! Do you not see that Mr Cavendish is not himself?” Damn it to the seven dimensions of Gar, she hadn't meant to phrase the truth that way. “I mean, Mr Cavendish is elsewhere. In his thoughts. Because he is sick--” Tiring of her own bad attempts at subterfuge, she tugged as hard as she could. “Never mind. _Out_ , Mr Pratt.”

But Mr William Pratt was a stubborn fellow. He literally dug his heels into the carpet. “Mr Cavendish, may I at least expect your answer to these points at tonight's party?”

Rupert sank into the desk chair quite as heavily as if he were actually ill. “You never listen, do you... I don't think I'll be able to attend, Mr Pratt. Mrs Cavendish and Miss Jenkins will be holding the open house, however, so, since you're invited, do come.”

The young man's blue eyes were wide with hurt and anger. But he scraped a respectable mumbled farewell, and finally let Anyanka drag him into the corridor. As she shut the door behind them, he burst out, “Miss Jenkins, do you think, that is, if I approach him again tonight--”

“He'll talk to you tomorrow,” she said, and yanked on his arm again. “Truly, he's not himself today.”

He allowed himself to stumble forward, but his words were just as dug-in as his heels had been. “But my beloved is expecting an answer, or... You know her, yes?”

“I know her, yes,” Anyanka said grimly. “And if she _is_ expecting something from you, which if I might say is unlikely, she can wait until tomorrow.”

Although Mr Pratt continued to protest, he went quickly enough after she'd pushed him through the front door. Then, avoiding the servants' gazes, she hurried back to the study.

Rupert now reclined on the settee, his boots resting on one arm of the piece, a worked cushion resting on his face. He didn't remove the cushion or stand when she appeared, merely saying in a muffled voice, “I can't handle any more, Anya.”

“Any more what?” She considered sitting down, but he'd left only a sliver of settee – so she sat on his stomach.

He oofed, then allowed the cushion to slide off his face. His spectacles were crooked. “Anya, please,” he said, “I only just ate.”

“Well, then, make room for me properly,” she said. Once he had (with attendant grumbling) sat up, fixed his spectacles, and given her space, she tucked her hand in his arm and said cosily, “Now what's to do? And why were you laughing so ill-timed at young Pratt?”

“Oh, what I could have done if I'd known his last name, what a lost opportunity,” Rupert murmured. Then, more rationally, “It's just, er... I knew him.”

“William Pratt?”

“Um, yes. But not by that name. And, er, not alive.” Once again Rupert's amusement had fled. “It's quite the Sunnydale Gaudy,” he said, to himself.

“You and your strange locutions,” she sighed. She didn't know why he closed his eyes at that, or why he then lifted her hand to his lips. The touch of lips to skin was so sweet, however, so warm, that for a moment she forgot the point she was making. But, to business: “Rupert, stop. How could you have known young Pratt in the future?”

He didn't lift his head. “I don't know if I should tell you. I don't know what might change. I don't know the consequences, don't know the original pattern... Christ, I don't know _anything_.”

“You're not making any sense. Just tell me how you might have known Pratt.”

The word was mumbled, but she caught it, yes. “Vampire.”

Bloodsuckers were not among her favourite demons, although one or two of her acquaintance had undeniable panache. Anyway: “He's a --”

Before her voice could rise to what justifiably could be considered a shriek, Rupert's free hand covered her mouth. “He isn't _now_ , Anya. I used the sunlight to check. Which means...” He let go of her entirely, and collapsed back into the settee. “Which means that the Council of Watchers' information on him is completely wrong. I knew that intellectually, of course, but seeing it for myself...”

“Council of Watchers,” Anyanka said through sudden cold. “You're not one of them, are you?”

“Was. Not really now.” Rupert ignored her involuntary shrinking away. “It's just... I know that Buffy, er, someone in the future learns more of his story than the official records, but, um, William and I weren't on particularly good terms, and she didn't share. I'm not sure when he will be turned, but I have a nasty suspicion it's soon.”

“So you think you might warn him to beware of vampires?” she said, and despite her dislike of Watchers, took his hand again. “Understandable enough. You're family, really. He's your great-uncle. And--” She scrutinised him. “I have to say there _is_ a ruggedly--”

“If you finish with 'handsome resemblance,' I shall run screaming from the room.”

“Can't face the truth, I suppose,” she said. Then, “Except the truth is that you're not to change anything, according to the Vile Cavendish. So, warning Pratt is a bad idea.”

“It's just... yes.” Rupert's voice was heavy. “Even beyond preventing his death... he will do great things in the future. Save the world. But he also will cause enormous agony and kill untold numbers of people. How does one balance that future? And what would be the consequences of changing it?”

Anyanka stopped. She rarely considered consequences beyond those of her work: eye for an eye, pain for pain. Such thoughts weren't helpful. “Why must you look beyond this moment, Rupert? Beyond getting past this particular challenge?”

He turned his head to gaze at her. His eyes were so deep, as penetrating as the sunlight now slanting across the desk almost to their sofa-island. “You're a straightline thinker, aren't you, Anya. It's one of the things I've... er, noticed about you. Appreciated, actually. But I've always wondered what would happen if you pushed it just a bit further. Thought about consequences beyond the next moment.”

She, Anyanka, justice-demon of a thousand years, did not usually struggle with internal contradictions. She had a job, and she did it well. She offered vengeance for those who had been grievously wounded, help for the helpless. But if she let herself fall into hazel-green depths, if she let herself consider... “You're not to change things, Rupert,” she said, and let go, and stood up.

He didn't move. “I suppose. I should return to research.”

There was a great clatter out in the hallway – likely Bridget, the second housemaid, dropping something again. The noise recalled Anyanka to her duty. Instead of standing there gazing at Rupert lounging on the settee (much as he was strangely delicious to look at), she busied herself with putting his used breakfast dishes on the tray.

He said softly, “Thank you, Anya,” in a voice that touched her. Then, in a quite different, business-like voice, “What did you know about William Pratt's business with Great-grandfather? You said that Pratt doesn't know his parentage, yes?”

“Correct.” She hesitated over his teacup, which had leaves one might read, and decided that she'd bring him fresh. “There's probably some nasty element to Cavendish's attention – which the young man doesn't need, seeing as he's stupidly set his heart on one of my colleagues.”

“What?”

“My supervisor D'Hoffryn often sends me out with my dear friend Halfrek,” she said. “We don't work the same jobs, of course – I don't even know why she's in London. But she is here under a pseudonym for work, going about in society, and the foolish boy is pursuing her.”

“Isn't that just like him,” Rupert muttered, then, although she couldn't quite make it out, he muttered something further about family resemblance.

“Yes, well,” she said, as she picked up the tray, “I'll perhaps send a note to Halfrek suggesting that she take several large steps back. She shouldn't toy with the poor fellow.”

Rupert smiled at her as she went to the door. “Anya, my dear,” he said, “you're changing things.”

She let the slam of the door and the click of the lock be her answer.

After putting the tray away – yet keeping Rupert's cup – she checked on Amelia, who seemed occupied in her consultation with Mrs Holland about party arrangements. Then she went into one of the parlors where the Cavendishes kept stationery. Sitting down at the ladies' desk, she pulled out a sheet and hastily wrote the following:

 **Hallie, dear,**   
**Please make sure to turn away the romantic attentions of Mr William Pratt this evening. You are moving beyond your work, and you are alarming his family. (Do ignore this if Mr Pratt _is_ your work, of course.)**   
**I shall speak further to you at the party,**   
**Your friend Anya**

Then she put down her pen and gazed into the teacup. The leaves had fallen well enough for divination, but she couldn't read the pattern. She hated when she couldn't read the pattern.

And she wasn't sure she liked that she could still almost feel the touch of Rupert's lips on her hand. That single point of contact was more important, somehow, than even the pleasure of waking up in his all-encompassing embrace that morning (and it had been pleasure).

“No, Anyanka,” she told herself. “Straightline thinker. Do your job.”

She stuffed the note into a convenient envelope and wrote the superscription **To Miss Cecily Adams** across the front.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of the afternoon, and the ticking of the clock.

The long-case clock struck the hour. One.

Giles blinked himself out of his lounging, absent contemplation of the two pendulums (an eight-day clock, his mind told him) and took another pull on his cigarillo. The rush of the smoke as he exhaled burned; the smoke itself lingered, then faded.

As the smoke disappeared, the clock-face seemed to wink at him. Bloody thing, with its inscription of _Tempus Fugit_ , its embossed capital-letter _Cs_ instead of 12, 3, 6, and 9, its inexorable rush forward. Bloody time.

He'd been trapped in here all morning, working on the grimoire, dreaming about Anya, and worrying over both Great-grandfather's note and the appearance of Spike-before-he-was-Spike. The grimoire had given little help; it confirmed that the binder of Chronos could use two grimoires to set up a pathway, that Chronos itself ate at the one who chained it, that existential dangers lay in the travelling of time, but it told no secrets about how to avert those dangers. Lock himself up, perhaps.

He'd tried locking himself up when Randall had died, of course, and look where that had got him...

William Pratt was a danger, too. So like Spike in his mad enthusiasm, his inability to listen, his inability to wait. (Spike had somehow survived the destruction of Sunnydale, although Giles hadn't seen him since. Buffy had, but she was no longer sharing those kind of details, and who could blame her...) So unlike Spike in that glow of youth, idealism, life. Giles would have bet a substantial amount of cash that the young Pratt – such a perfect name, he thought with an odd shot of affection – wouldn't accept Anya's and his insistence that 'John' would not be available at the party.

Anya. He'd told her hours ago that she was changing things, but she kept right on – bringing him tea at regular intervals, petting his shoulder, offering her commentary on the ancient butler's feud with the housekeeper and the party difficulties that ensued, remembering random bits of demon lore which were fascinating, if currently unhelpful in researching Chronos.

He desperately wanted to leave the study, grab her by the hand, and pull her out into this unfamiliar world. Just unlock the door, leave this mess, and run, he thought. Just... never let her go.

Eleven hours until he had to leave this mess, until he had to let her go. This time her loss would be so much worse than the first time.

Tap on the door, turn of the knob. “Come in,” he said without thinking of anything but her.

“Thank you, John,” said Great-grandmother, as the door opened, and she sailed right in with a tray of food and a teapot. He had time to note that she was young, pretty, and a few months pregnant, she had passed her strong jawline down to Grandmother Giles, and she was furious.

Belatedly, Giles covered his face with the hand which held the cigarillo, and made himself cough. “My dear – er, no, I mean, Amelia – I really don't think..."

“Yes, I heard. You fear an infectious complaint,” Great-grandmother said. The collision of tray and desk was not a gentle one. “Cousin Anya has taken pains to repeatedly convey your concerns, but--” She looked up and gasped. “What has happened to you?”

“Unwell,” Giles said helplessly. “Really, really unwell.”

“You look hearty, John, other than the cut on your head. You look...different.”

Giles said nothing. Nothing he could say, really. He idly stirred the rather messy papers on Great-grandfather's desk – which revealed a thin manuscript entitled, yes, _Evanescence and Innocence_. With a hand he willed to remain steady, he opened to the first poem.

“Spending time with Cousin Anya must agree with you,” Great-grandmother said bitterly.

She had no idea, Giles thought. “No, Amelia. I am just... Er, could you ask me about this tomorrow?” He coughed again. “I know I am asking a great deal of you, to carry on with the party tonight without me, and I know that this must seem strange--”

“Not at all strange,” she said, and he heard again the sorrow of a woman at the end of her endurance. This time, however, he also heard the frustrated love she hadn't lost yet, and he felt his own sorrow for her pain.

“Cousin Amelia!” Anya said from the corridor. As she burst in: “I _told_ you I would carry that in for you, it is unfair of you to use my adjudicating of the battle between Partington and Mrs Holland for this dangerous enterprise, you _know_ you should think of your child.”

“Yes, do think of your unborn daughter,” Giles said. Two pairs of female eyes drilled into him, and he realised his mistake. Just because he knew the sex of the unborn child didn't mean _they_ did. “Or, er, son. Our child, that is.”

“Yes, John,” Great-grandmother said, each word obedient, each word a dagger. “I shall not think of my own feelings, I shall think only of the babe and of the social occasion which you've forced on me.” She glared at Anya. “I suppose you shall do better than I in taking care of my husband.”

“No, _really_ , no,” Anya said with utter sincerity.

Averting her eyes from them both, Great-grandmother swept out. Anya tossed one searing look at him, said, “Now see what you've done!” and followed. The resulting door slam likely could be heard on Piccadilly, Giles thought.

He took one more puff of the cigarillo, then laid it on the ashtray to burn itself out. The opening of young Pratt's first poem caught his eye.

 _The heart is a thing which burns aflame_   
_With love, with glory, and with fame_

“Dear God, this must be the most fucking awful poetry in the history of the world,” he murmured, and reached for his tea.

........................................

The long-case clock struck the hour. Two.

The door opened. “I've decided to forgive you for regrettable male idiocy and absent-mindedness,” Anya said. “I've also come to collect the luncheon tray.”

Giles looked up at her – she was so charming in her nineteenth-century garb – and made himself smile. “I am so glad, Anya. For, er, the forgiveness, I do need it. And for taking me away from this.” He gestured down at Pratt's manuscript. “I can only assume that Great-grandfather had requested a private interview with William so that he might break more gently the news of it being utter shite.”

“Really? Worse than news of his parentage?” She came around behind him, and he was enveloped in jasmine and warmth. When she put her hands on his tense shoulders and began to knead, it was all he could do not to lean his head back between her breasts and purr. “I don't care for poetry myself. Why not just say what a thing is, rather than developing an elaborate system for not saying it.”

Even though a darkening mood, he chuckled. She was so...Anya. And if the moment was 'evanescent and doomed', as one of William's worst poems would have it, then he would appreciate what he had.

She leaned forward so that her breath stirred his hair. Sweetly: “If you've read all that, you must be bored. Have you found Cavendish's collection of pornography yet? It might while away the hours...”

...........................................

  
The long-case clock struck the hour. Four.

Giles hardly noticed. He turned the page of another volume – _not_ one of Great-grandfather's pornographic marvels from what was indeed a remarkable collection, he'd had a quick scan earlier as he'd explored the study shelves – about temporal magics. Although it had been written in 1770, this theoretical inquiry by the mage Bradford Tempus Tolliver had offered some interesting and almost prescient insights.

He stopped on a paragraph and read it again. _From the simplest of spells the fall of a single sparrow, the flight of a single butterfly, might have incalcuble effects – could change the world as we know it. But the time-traveller also must understand that the fall of that sparrow, the beating wings of that butterfly, might have no effect at all. He must proceed in and out of time as if nothing and everything will change, using his strongest magics and best, most rational sense._

“Tea, Rupert,” Anya said, close to his ear.

He stopped himself from jolting up. “Anya, darling, again! A little more warning next time?”

“It's four,” she said, as if that made any kind of sense at all. “Teatime. Early, because our guests will arrive at seven.”

“Thank you,” he said, and simultaneously reached for his tea and pushed the volume toward her. “What do you think of this?”

She scanned the paragraph as he drank the delicious, perfectly prepared brew. (She always had made his tea perfectly, he thought.) “It seems incomprehensible. Is it poetry too?”

“No. It's actually an anticipation of twentieth-century science,” he said. “Er, I won't tell you all about it – beyond that it's known as 'the Butterfly Effect,' or more formally, 'sensitive dependence on initial conditions.'”

“Indeed?” she said interrogatively, and stole one of his ginger biscuits.

“Yes, it's, um, part of chaos theory.” As always, he suppressed involuntary guilt at the word --- but this was too important for his old shames to revive. “Not actually chaotic, though, because it means that there is order even if we can't see it in the intersecting chains of events, as well as almost infinite capacity for change.”

She swallowed her biscuit. “And?”

“And...” He shrugged. “It could mean that whatever I do might _not_ change events, if the initial condition does not change, or if countervailing forces, er, provide force.”

“Ah-hah. Because you're worried about changing things, this makes you feel better,” she said. Then, “But – I realise I'm arguing on the other side now – one single Wish can change a world. That's why wishes should be deployed so carefully in the service of justice.”

“I thought you didn't worry about consequences, Anya.”

“I think you should stop confusing me,” she said tartly, and swung out of his reach. “When you do magic, do you worry about where the magic goes?”

A friend's body collapsed in death, the feeling of being hunted years later, the _burn_ of it -- “Disaster taught me to do so, yes.”

And thus he hadn't done magic for years, and disaster almost came anyway, again and again and again.

Giles remembered failed spells in his Sunnydale flat, Spike saying something obnoxious about stink-beetles, carrying the coven's power and tasting it for years afterward. He had been afraid so many times to change things, and the fear had been dark as disaster.

Anya's lips on the corner of his mouth woke him from bad memories and locked him firmly in the moment. She was so warm, so strong, so oddly filled with light --

And then she pulled away. Her eyes deep and solemn, she said, “You think too much, dear Rupert,” and left without saying another word.

His hand shaking, his heart lost again, he reached for his tea.

..................................................

The long-case clock struck the hour. Seven.

Giles rubbed his tired eyes. The clock face seemed to be curling into a sinister smile, right under the _Tempus fugit._

Yes, yes, time flew, he thought. And he was out of tea.

Outside the study, the house buzzed with the beginnings of the party. Great-grandmother had come by a few minutes ago and silently laid the guest list on his desk; Anya had not been in since five. He felt unutterly bereft, and trapped. He'd crept upstairs to use the water-closet a time or two, but that had been the extent of his travels.

Five hours til he would go home, or what passed for home.

And he had seen nothing, a voice whispered in his mind. He had locked himself up in this small room, and yet change might have happened regardless, and yet disaster might have come to stay.

 _The heart is a thing which burns aflame._

 _He must proceed in and out of time as if nothing and everything will change._

The clockface smiled at him, although it seemed blurry now, as if his last cigarillo hours ago had left indelible smoke and shade in the passage of time. He could taste the old smoke, and the old magic.

He wanted to see Anya in her party clothes. He wanted to see Spike the Pratt one more time, so that should he ever encounter him again, he could remember the boy as well as the vampire. He wanted Anya. He wanted to move.

He found himself humming. “'With catlike tread upon the prey we steal...'”

He found himself at the door, his hand on the knob.

What would it hurt if he stole a look?


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein our hero and heroine find themselves on the outskirts of canon, fools for love and knowledge.

The party seemed to be going well enough considering its lack of host, Anyanka thought. Lots of stupid aristocrats and plutocrats, of course, just like Cavendish, and politically minded young individuals who wished to _become_ aristocrats or plutocrats, but they all were mingling well enough. William Pratt was writing awful poetry in a corner, out of harm's way. Amelia, laughing, had just been pulled away from her hostess duties by one of her two female friends who'd attended this otherwise Cavendish-heavy affair, and looked lighter than she had done in a fortnight.

All in all, Anyanka felt justified in standing in the corner, sipping her lightly alcoholic beverage, and visiting with her own friend, who'd been apprised of strange time-travellers named Rupert. And in a moment she might be able to steal away and take that same Rupert some food or drink, perhaps play with his hair or his nicely shaped mouth under pretext of... something...

“Anyanka, dear,” Halfrek said in a hushed voice, “there is a very distinguished gentleman with a very poorly tied cravat, pretending to be invisible just there. See? Lurking in the corridor. I think he might be your, well, complication?”

“That's uncharacteristically delicate of you, Hallie,” Anyanka said, and craned her head to look. Yes, that was Rupert, all handsome and rumpled and lurkery, daring discovery as he skulked past an archway. She had no idea why he might be out of hiding or what he hoped to accomplish -- “Oh, pooh. I must go put him back before he's found out.”

"Do you think you can?” Hallie said, with a raised eyebrow. “He looks as strong-willed as your target Cavendish. And, dear girl, there's a note in your voice--”

“Stop.” Anyanka frowned at her, as a substitute for frowning at her own traitorous self. She shouldn't be so drawn to someone who would be leaving in just a few hours, even if in a century or so she would meet him again. And they weren't lovers in the future, he'd said, which she found frankly incomprehensible. Was she perhaps blind in the future? Anyway, to business: “Is there anything I need to do to assist your own vengeance work, _Cecily_?”

Hallie tapped her cheek with her finger. “No, no, I couldn't possibly ask you to leave your complication. I've only to break a politician who's neglecting his young daughter in favour of the new Gladstone government, anyway. And--” She broke off, then sighed. “And it looks as though William Pratt's making a fool of himself again.”

Anyanka looked where Hallie indicated, and sighed too. The poor poetical idiot was being baited by a group of other idiots. He looked most unhappy; even his curls were falling, much like his spectacles. “Well, if he approaches you--”

“I shall reject him, as you've requested. To be honest, Anyanka, he's driving me mad and getting in my way. I'd already planned to cut any ties.”

One more look; one more sigh. “Well, do be as gentle as you possibly can. He's had a distinctly hard day already.”

“Of course! You know me,” Hallie said sweetly.

“I do. That's why I'm being quite specific about your being gentle,” Anyanka said. It wasn't meant to be amusing, although Halfrek laughed nevertheless.

But Anyanka was already on the move. Throwing a nonchalant wave to Amelia, dodging an overly amourous gentleman with whom Cavendish did business, wincing at the group harassing poor William, she danced her way toward the archway – where, indeed, Rupert was peeping out again.

She caught him by the simple expedient of wrapping her hand in his admittedly untidy cravat and pulling. “What do you think you're doing?” she said quietly but fiercely, and after a glance to reconnoitre for passing guests and servants, she manoeuvred him into a small, dim nook behind a mass of convenient house-plants.

“I'm just looking, Anya. Watching,” he said, equally quiet and yet cranky, and took back his tie. Then a sidelong glare at the greenery, and a muttered, “I hate aspidistras.”

“Your hatred of an innocuous plant is immaterial,” she said. She didn't like not having hold of him (he woud be slipping away soon enough), and so she wrapped her hand in his lapel. “Do you _choose_ to be discovered?”

“Surely I've already seen anyone who's looking for.... Wait, pretend I didn't say anything so stupid.”

“Gladly! You could provoke a nasty magic backwash with unwarranted presumption like that.”

In the corridor, just on the other side of the scorned houseplant, a guest went by. Anyanka stepped closer to Rupert. For the oddest moment, all the bustle of the party around them faded. He cleared his throat – that throat, newly bared, which meant skin and warmth, and...

“Anya.”

“Hmmm?” She rubbed her knuckles against his coat. The coat he was wearing. He, Rupert, time-traveller, whom she'd slept with... She blinked herself out of a creeping lustful haze. “What now? Are you ready to go back to the study?”

His gaze was fixed on her lips. “'As if everything and nothing will change,'” he murmured, then, “Er. What? Yes. Yes, I suppose.” Then, “Wait. How's William doing?”

“Oh, the usual. Being humiliated for his poetry – you're not the only one who thinks it's bad – and about to be summarily rejected by the womanly vengeance demon on whom he's set his heart.”

Rupert's head had been bowing toward her, slowly, inevitably, but at that he jerked back. “Oh, bloody... Anya, Anya, he doesn't take rejection at all well.”

She didn't appreciate this comment. “But, Rupert, we agreed that Hallie, I mean, Cecily should take several steps back from young William. And anyway, just because his vampire self doesn't take rejection well--”

“I wonder,” he said softly. “Aren't you the same, Anya, human or demon?”

She appreciated even less this personal question, which might have been designed to cause painful introspection. Just because closeness to him called out the girl who had been Aud before the betrayal and the millennium of vengeance: “That's not the point, Rupert. It's already done.”

From the other side of the aspidistras came stumbling footsteps and then a heartbroken, one-breath-away-from-tears mutter. “'Beneath her.' Oh, I'll show her. I'll show her....”

“Fucking hell,” Rupert whispered. “Spike, er... William doesn't sound, um, stable. Perhaps we should follow him, keep him from doing anything rash.”

She put her hands on his face, kept him focussed on her. “Rupert. You know you can't do anything.”

His gaze never leaving hers, he licked those thin, well-formed lips. (She found this an unscrupulous tactic, but couldn't summon the strength to mention it.) “The Butterfly Effect,” he said softly, but with so much passion in his voice. “Have we set something new in motion, or is the pattern already established? I need to _see_ , Anya.”

He shouldn't. They shouldn't. All they had to do was get through another few hours, and then her vengeance target would be back, and Rupert would return to a world where so inexplicably they had failed to become lovers, and.... “Damn it to D'Hoffryn and back,” she said. “Are you always like this? Reckless, plunging into action?”

He smiled. “Oddly enough – no. I'd thought I'd outgrown that particular trait. But with you I almost always lose all control.”

“Lovely,” she sighed, and then pulled his head forward and kissed him.

He kissed like a time-travelling dream, Rupert. Just tall and broad enough for her taste; strong arms, with one big hand teasing at her bottom, controlling without exerting too much force; mobile lips, fast tongue. He was there, all the way. She couldn't imagine her future self not grappling this one to herself with hoops of Stae-dimension steel.

She kissed even more enthusiastically, trying to move past the strangest, most unfamiliar pain.

But then he pulled back – she feeling a little drunk from the kiss, to be honest – and he took her hand. “Shall we?” he said. "With catlike tread, of course."

She closed her eyes, breathed, and then opened them to his smile. “Oh, what the hell. Come along, I know a back way.” When he raised an eyebrow, she added crossly, “Not _that_. You have a filthy mind.”

“How do you know what I was thinking?” he murmured.

“Never mind, Rupert,” she said, already moving. “Except, do mind the aspidistra.”

“Yes, we'll keep it flying,” he said in the most baffling way, and then they were out and running, following William Pratt.

This was a terrible idea, she thought. But she wouldn't have changed it.

Strange.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chase through Mayfair streets.

Giles stepped out of the door, and 1880 London struck him between the eyes.

The evening was heavy with smoke-into-fog, loud with the clatter of carriages and shouts, gaslit, _full_ in a way that even 2009 London wasn't. He stood on the pavement, his hand in Anya's, and breathed --

Until she tugged at him and said sharply, “Following William Pratt, remember? We need to hurry, because he's disappearing down the street and also because even a vengeance demon can feel the night-chill.”

He glanced down the street – the flutter of William's jacket was still in view – and then at Anya. She looked so pretty in the glow from the streetlamp. He wanted to kiss her again as he'd done in that protected space, take in that odd sweetness and give back all he could. He'd silently appreciated her hair earlier, the height the style gave her, and he'd appreciated even more the rather low cut of her bodice on her long green dress. But she was already starting to shiver, not to mention frown.

After letting go, he shrugged off Great-grandfather's jacket and put it around her shoulders. “There,” he said. “I don't need it.”

Her frown deepened, even as she held the coat closed with one hand and sort of...snuggled inside, in a fetching way he wished he hadn't noticed because it made him want to stop this mad chase and take her somewhere private... “Rupert, you'll cause comment if you walk around in your shirtsleeves.”

“The idea of you worrying about others' opinions is truly piquant,” he said, unable to repress a smile. “But let's fight about that later.”

She huffed, “We don't _have_ 'later,' Rupert,” took his hand again, and began to walk briskly in the direction William had taken.

Giles lost his smile. He kept forgetting about the time, and the loss to come – he needed to focus. And he needed to keep up with her.

Ahead of them, William cut between two men. Giles and Anya were too far away to catch the resulting exchange of words, but it didn't appear to be good. With an impatient (and familiar) gesture with the hand still clutching papers, William spun away from them and walked faster. Short as it was, his suit jacket swung out in a horribly familiar way, and Giles felt his own shiver down the spine.

The official Watcher biography of Spike, the one Giles had quoted Buffy when Spike first came to Sunnydale, had been inaccurate, and Giles didn't know when William had been turned. But he had a very, very bad feeling about this night.

They were all heading south, toward Curzon Street. “Where can the idiot be going?” Rupert muttered.

“I don't know,” Anya said, and side-stepped a puddle. “He lives with his mother in Marylebone somewhere, I believe. But this is the opposite direction, isn't it?”

“Yes.” Giles considered, even as they sped up.”If he goes past Curzon Street, he might be headed for Piccadilly. Get a cab there.” Audley Street broke up at Curzon, however, and there were so many alleys in which William might lose himself. Or-- “He could turn west, head toward Park Lane.”

“Or he could turn east, go to Soho, and distract himself with a whore!” Anya said brightly.

“I don't think he'd choose that, although who knows. He's an over-dramatic pillock, prone to over-compensation.”

“Family resemblance, then,” she said.

He would have snarled at her for that, except that she might be right (damn her), and that William was moving even faster, the prat in truth needed to just bloody stop--

“William! William Pratt, wait!” he shouted.

William spun around again, and in the motion Giles saw the beginnings of Spike's battle-pose. “Tomorrow, sir!” he shouted – but his voice was thickened by tears. Whatever else he might have said was lost in the rush of a passing cab, in the jostling of a pedestrian couple on Giles and Anya's heels. Giles shot a nasty glance over his shoulder at the pair, then looked back.

William was all but running away, tearing up the papers he carried so that white bits fluttered up toward the lamps.

“I suppose that's freshly written bad poetry being shredded,” Anya said.

“I fear so. Shall we--”

But she was already pulling him, direct as always. “Mr Pratt, just wait!” she said piercingly.

William was almost to Curzon Street by now. To Curzon Street, yes. Turning, turning out of sight.

“East toward Soho,” Anya said, “we should have bet.”

He reminded himself to laugh sometime in that 'later' they didn't have, at which thought he lost all desire to laugh. He moved faster, in time with her. Almost to the corner themselves.

Out of their sight, out of reach, William shouted, “You-- watch where you're going!” Closer now; the tears were almost spilling over, erasing the words.

A scrap of paper blew past Giles' foot, and he gambled a glance. One word flashed – _effulgent_ , how bloody awful – and then the paper rolled into Curzon Street, disappearing into the dark, as if erased.

In their rush, Anya tripped over the hem of her dress. He caught her before she fell all the way, his hands sliding under Great-grandfather's coat. “Rupert,” she said, “Rupert.”

Her eyes seemed so deep, so beautifully dark. But he didn't have time, but he wanted so badly to make a wish that couldn't come true. He knew, even if young William didn't, that almost everything passed away. So he contented himself with a kiss on her forehead and one last tug to settle the coat again on her shoulders. She brushed her free hand over his heart, and then pulled them both around the corner.

Another annoying pedestrian couple, man and woman, came toward them. He couldn't quite see around them, the bloody man was so large, but he glimpsed William, pursued by a female. Couldn't see the woman's face, but she was laughing --

Dear God, he knew that laugh. She'd laughed, merry and cold, when he had awakened from thrall, from a dream of dead Jenny, to find her lips so close.

Drusilla.

Giles tried to speed up, but the couple wouldn't move. The woman just in front of them said, “I found you,” to the man, who turned toward them and paused.

Angelus. Oh, Christ, it was Angelus --

Who stepped toward Giles and Anya with a grace and a smile that Giles knew was entirely, entirely false. “What are you looking at, man?” Angelus said. “And how might I help you?”

A passerby might not have seen the gameface rippling under the social mask, but Giles did. Yes, he saw.

His hand – with one finger still crooked from Angelus' torture all those years ago – tightened on Anya's, and he cursed this and every reality in which he didn't have a stake.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein good sense does not always prevail.

Anyanka didn't much like the look of the male in front of them. Perhaps it was the overly theatrical presentation, featuring 'artistic' hair and a billowy coat; perhaps it was the way his teeth gleamed in his smile.

Yes, vampire. She was fairly sure of it. Damn, and they needed to be following William...

Rupert, meanwhile, had gone very still, very cold. “Let us pass, if you would,” he said. The words were polite – the tone, not at all. In fact, she thought, it was perfectly pitched to escalate the situation.

“You might try _not_ to irritate this individual, Rupert, I think he's a bloodsucker,” she whispered.

“I know he is.” His whisper was almost lost in the rumble of a nearby travelling carriage, but she heard it.

And so did the bloodsucker, whose lips recessed even further, whose lamplit face began to shimmer in the beginnings of the change. “You know who I am?” His tongue touched his upper lip in a fleeting and unattractive way. “Then you know how you can help _me_.”

The well-turned-out blonde woman standing next to the vampire – no, wait, she also had a too-gleaming smile, too many teeth -- sighed, “Oh, Angelus. Must you?”

But where her hand touched Rupert's, Anyanka felt a ripple, a gathering. Power, deflected, reflected.

She had almost forgot that Rupert was at least in some small way a mage himself. “What are you doing?” she said.

Rupert brought his free hand forward. In it he held fire, a small vibrant punch of it. “I can help you with this,” he said to the vampire.

The vampires stepped back, just a little – then in one of those obnoxious dramatic rushes of which vampires were so fond, the male leapt forward and blew on the flame.

Rupert almost lost it, but cupped his fingers over it in time and murmured something she couldn't quite hear. Sparks flew up, over, and almost onto the male's boots.

The blonde rolled her eyes and pulled the male vampire back. “ _Must_ you, Angelus?” she said again, with more annoyance.

The male – right, Angelus was his name – growled and went full-fang, heedless of the people milling around. Anyanka heard at least one curse, two muffled shrieks, and one female pedestrian's really stupid lusty wish for him...

This clearly had to stop. She assessed the situation – Rupert with his hand full of fire, Angelus with his teeth full of, well, teeth – and determined that the males were beyond reason at the moment. Blood and flames were about to destroy this nice, extremely public street and possibly her Rupert's flesh and/or life, and she didn't want to contemplate him being hurt, regardless of his current idiocy.

The blonde vampire, however, might be a person of good sense.

Anyanka stepped just a bit in front of Rupert and smiled with her best social grace. “Ma'am?” she said to the female. “It would be to your and your escort's best advantage to just pass us by, as Rupert requested earlier.”

“Why would that be, dear?” the vampire replied, in a woman-to-woman way – if one ignored her subtle move forward and elongating fangs, which Anyanka didn't.

Instead, Anyanka let her own vengeance-face ripple into view and then fade. “Demon-courtesy, for one. He's mine.”

The vampire laughed charmingly, and her hint of gameface disappeared back into her exquisite maquillage. “You've heard the lady, Angelus. She's claimed the gentleman,” she said, her gloved hand tightening on Angelus' arm hard enough to drive down below cloth and skin to the bone. “Now be a proper knight-errant for me, and step aside.”

Angelus's growl deepened until it resonated with carriage wheels on stone, with the hiss of gaslight, with the striking of a nearby clock.

Rupert's fire roared, just once, and went out. A nice show of good faith, she mentally applauded him – but stood in front of him nevertheless.

Angelus smiled sans gameface, and it was lovely, and it was horrible. “Anything for a lady,” he said.

“What's your name, my dear?” the female said.

“Anyanka, daughter of vengeance. And yours, just for future reference?”

“Darla, Clan of Aurelius,” she said, and they nodded, equal to equal, one person of good sense to another.

The two vampires passed by without further incident, other than Angelus leaning in to say to Rupert, “Perhaps I'll see you again, man,” before Darla pushed him forward.

“Yes. You will,” Rupert whispered. What Anyanka now felt in him was a different kind of cold, and the echo of a long-ago Wish for justice. He had had fire then, too, but not enough.

She couldn't grant old wishes, unfortunately: too faraway in time, too faint. But she could slip an arm around his waist and pull him into her, hard as anything. She could say softly, “Don't worry, Rupert. Maybe we've changed something.”

“Maybe,” he said in a voice which indicated extreme doubt. But he kissed her temple sweetly, and he let her comfort them both for a good long moment--

Until both of them jolted at the same time, and he said, “William!”

Anyanka surveyed the street – empty of Pratts as far as the eye could see, which was actually fairly far even though it was night – and said, “Gone.”

“Maybe,” Rupert repeated, except there was no doubt in his voice. He sounded... lost, somehow. And the nearby clock, she realised, had struck eight. Four hours left.

Now _she_ felt lost. This was unfortunate and stupid, but there she was. And--

“There's an alley down there.” Rupert was already moving. “Oh God, oh God... _Drusilla_.”

She hurried to catch up with him. “Drusilla would be whom?”

“When we turned the corner, did you see the woman pursuing William? Rather, vampire?” he said, almost on the run. When she fought to keep up, he slowed, he took a better grip of her before she fell again. (Had fallen in another sense already, and how inconvenient.) “Faulty as they were, the Watchers' records always said that he was turned by an Aurelian, and I assumed Angelus... I think Spike even said something about Angel once, early on. But, God, God, Drusilla makes so much more sense.”

Anyanka considered William Pratt's enthusiasm for love and his willingness to write bad poetry and bare his perhaps-soon-to-be-nonexistent soul... “He _would_ be the type to be turned by a pretty face and a pair of sharp fangs.”

“Yes,” Rupert said, tight-lipped, and together they turned into the alley.

Before them, lanterns swung – one, two – illuminating an empty yard, bordered by mews. An open door at the far end, another pool of light --

Rupert pulled Anyanka into a pool of shadows just as the two figures in that far pool of light broke apart, just as the male figure fell. His shirt was open, his neck bloody – William, gone. Deadweight.

It was a pity, Anyanka thought. A true pity, even if it was fate.

The female figure knelt, teasing back the hair which curled over his forehead, then taking his spectacles off and throwing them on the ground. “There you are, my knight,” she crooned. “Soon, soon, you shall rise.”

“It's not _soon_ ,” Anyanka murmured for accuracy's sake. “But it does appear to be over.”

“Too late,” Rupert whispered. “Too late to change anything.”

Her hand on William's forehead, Drusilla froze – then said in a light and entirely mad voice.”What do I hear, my dollies? What little mousies might want to come play?”

“ _Not_ a person of good sense,” Anyanka whispered. “I can't reason with her if she accosts us. So, Rupert, come on.”

He didn't want to, she could tell. But he sighed only once, gazing at the vampire in the light, gazing at the still warm corpse of his relation, and then led them both out of the alley. Drusilla didn't follow.

Just past the mouth of the alley, however, he stooped and picked up a shard of paper.

Once out in the Curzon Street gaslight, he stopped, and over his arm, she read dead William's hand. Just a fragment, just one word. _Heart._

Rupert read it over a couple of times, then crumpled the paper in the hand which had held the fire he'd conjured. Trace of magic still there, she thought – just as he said, _“The heart is a thing which burns aflame With love, with glory, and with fame.'”_

“I'm sure William would be happy with the elegy,” she said, and urged him to go forward. Now that destiny and/or fate had had its little joke, she needed to get him out of this fresh, cold wind and back safely to the Cavendish study, she needed to return to her job, she needed him...

No, Anyanka, she told herself. You want but you don't need. Much.

Rupert went where she prodded him, but absently, and slowly. “He will kill two Slayers, he will save the world...” he said, almost to himself. “But he doesn't have a proper entry in the history books. No proper origin story.”

“You can fix that when you get back to your time,” she said. “Come along now.”

But he stopped again. The lamplight silvered him, gilded him, made him look so perfect in the mix of old and new clothes – and she thought of him holding fire, and her shiver wasn't due to cold. The lamplight also showed grief passing over his ruggedly handsome face. He might not have liked William Pratt much, but he mourned for him.

These were all very fine qualities in a man, but the lamplight further showed a spark of recklessness in hazel-green eyes, too. Rupert was thinking, which she felt was dangerous -- “Come along,” she said more sharply. “Don't let sadness prompt you into doing something stupid. And we don't have _time_ for you to do something stupid.”

He wasn't listening. He stared up at the starless night sky, his mouth twisted in thought. “Anya,” he said, “You don't trust Great-grandfather, do you? Beyond trusting him to return at the time he set.”

“You know I don't.” She tightened her grip on him. “But I don't see--”

“Right,” he said with sudden decision. “Then I'll leave a message for Grandmother.”

“You mean your _great_ -grandmother.”

He smiled at her. “No, I mean Grandmother. Nothing and everything has changed.... I'll give William Pratt his due in the history books. Make his life mean something.”

“You've gone mad too, dear Rupert.” With her free hand she patted his arm. “It's understandable, of course, what with sadness and temporal instability, but just let me get you back to the Cavendish house, and--”

“No,” he said. An attractive and utterly terrifying grin – more terrifying than that Angelus individual's – illuminated his face. “We should have just enough time to go to the Council of Watchers.”

“ _What?_ ” This was regrettably but understandably shrill, loud enough to frighten a nearby horse.

He brought her hand to his lips for a long moment, then let go. “Right, Bloomsbury it is.” And he stepped out into the street and signalled for a nearby hansom cab. As it rattled toward them, he glanced over his shoulder. The grin was still there. “'Let's vary piracy with a little burglary.'”

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no... But even in a mere twenty-four or so hours, she'd learnt that look of resolve on his face. Her handsome crazy person from the future couldn't be allowed to wander London alone; someone of good sense needed to accompany him. There was only one thing to be said.

“'Tarantara,'” she said faintly.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Giles remembers a great many things.

Inside the hansom cab, Giles felt every jolt over the uneven streets. He felt every curve of Anya as she pressed against him, pulled away, pressed against him. The hoofbeats of the horses marked the time, each a point on the pendulum-swing of fire and grief and power, fire and grief and power, now and then, then and now --

And then, although the horses continued on, the mental pendulum stopped on a most uncomfortable thought. “Er, Anya?”

“Yes, Rupert?” she said, her lips against his throat.

The small sensual pleasure wasn't enough to smother his thought. “Anya, I don't have any money.”

She moved back. “I beg your pardon?”

“I don't have any money. Rather, I don't have any money that will pass muster in 1880. The 2009 coins and paper money, well...” He didn't even bring up the uselessness of his Access and Visa cards.

Even in the dim light of the carriage, he could see her mouth tighten. “The cabdriver will require contemporary cash for services rendered, Rupert.”

“Um, yes.” He ventured a smile. “Do you have any?”

“No. But--” Her hands dived into the pockets of Great-grandfather's coat, which was still draped around her shoulders. He watched with some fascination her contortions, until she announced, “No.”

“Then we have a problem.”

Muttering under her breath something uncomplimentary about “reckless crazy men,” she looked out the carriage window. He watched the play of light over her features, the sharp and soft of them, and then looked past to see the world. The windows of Liberty and Co flashed by --

“Well, then,” she said briskly, “I'll have to teleport back to the Cavendish house in order to acquire some money, and then I'll teleport back and meet you outside the Council of Watchers. Didn't you tell the cabbie a Bloomsbury Square address?”

“Yes, but--”

“I can't teleport into a moving vehicle, Rupert, I'm not that good.”

“I think you're very good indeed,” he said.

She smiled, even as she let Great-grandfather's coat slip from her shoulders. “What would you do without me?” she said, and then rode one of the carriage-jolts into his arms. Jasmine and sweetness on a damp, sad night -- “I'll see you in a few minutes,” she said, and then kissed him, and then was gone.

"Hurry,” he said to the empty air.

It was chilly without her. No, he had started to feel the cold as soon as Angelus had turned around. He remembered too well the night Jenny died, remembered the cold encasing him even as he'd thrown the fire toward Angelus and Drusilla and Spike. He hadn't had enough fire that night, he thought again, as he'd thought this evening after the departure of Angelus and... Darla? Was she the one Wesley had said something important about, he couldn't remember, he had so rarely paid attention to poor Wesley.

He remembered Jenny's death and the aftermath, yes. He had been saved that night in the old factory not just because of Buffy's arrival, but because Spike had held Drusilla back. Hadn't been British fair play, of course, only hatred of Angelus, but still. In the ensuing years Spike had tried to kill them all, had worked to save them.

He thought of William now, cold forever, lying in a pool of lantern-light, and he cupped his left hand, and summoned fire again. In his pocket was the slip of William's poetry. Awkwardly, off-hand, he retrieved the paper. _Heart_.

The cab jolted once more, and control of magic and paper almost slipped away. But he had regained skill in these past few years, enough to keep together what he once would have lost. He had lost so much, so much, he couldn't afford any more.

No money, his mind whispered, and he thought of Anya and smiled despite the heartbreak he knew was coming.

Then he turned his attention again to fire and grief and power. The flames danced in his palm, and he lifted the paper over it.

“ _The heart is a thing which burns aflame_ ,” he incanted, “and so in brightness may the memory of William Pratt burn, a bloody awful poet but a man who sought the best.” There, that was vague enough.

The slip of paper caught fire, fluttered in eternity, in time without time where clocks meant nothing, and vanished.

Giles blew out his fire. Then he settled back against the padded seat. Using the magic had warmed him, but he felt suddenly and profoundly lonely again. “What will I do without you indeed, Anya darling,” he murmured.

He thought one last time about the night Jenny died and his thirst for Angel's death, thought about Jenny's own betrayal of him thanks to her family's need for vengeance. After the fall of Sunnydale he had realized that he'd been unconscionably hypocritical about her and Anya's vengeance-careers, when he had felt the same bloody drives. But Anya had recognised at last that vengeance and justice were not synonymous, and he must do the same.

His hand brushed against the coat she'd left. In one of the pockets she'd all but turned out, an object ticked... Oh, right. Great-grandfather's second-best pocket watch, which had been in the coat when she'd given it to Giles that morning. He hadn't used it, trapped in the study with the long-case clock as he'd been, but here it was.

He wondered now where Chronos had been bound. Perhaps Great-grandfather carried the demon with him in his best pocket watch, power in the sweep of the second hand. Fire and grief and power, then and now, now and then.

He had only a little over three hours before he had to leave her, and nothing and everything would change.

The carriage slowed at that moment. “Bloomsbury Square, Council of Wotsits,” the cabbie announced from his perch above the slowing hoofbeats. “And – what's this, then?”

Anya, now wearing a smart coat, stood with folded arms, her neat little foot visible under her skirts as it tapped nervously on the pavement.

When Giles stuck his head out the window, however, she looked up and smiled. “There you are!”

The cabbie said, “Miss, weren't you... didn't I....”

After pulling on the coat, Giles stepped out -- just as Anya stepped up and said, “Fare, sir?”

The cabbie stammered something unrecognizable as human speech.

Giles took the appropriate money from her hand -- old money; he hadn't seen it in years -- and put it into the cabbie's slackened grip. “Pretend you didn't see this exchange,” he said to the man, and then caught Anya and escorted her back to safety. He waited until the cab had driven off at a high rate of speed, and then he kissed her lightly, just enough of a taste to torment himself. “Thank you, Anya.”

“You're welcome,” she said, leaning in. Then, hesitating, “So this is it?”

The Council of Watchers building loomed in front of them. The dark weight of it in the night struck Giles hard, knowing its end as he did, knowing its oppressive force in his own life. But knowledge was one of the few Council values in which Giles still believed, and he knew the place inside and out.

“Yes. We're going in,” he said, his arm tightening around her even as she tried to ease away. “You're going in too, darling.”

“But I'm a demon,” she said quietly. “Aren't there alarms or bells or warning devices when a demon crosses the threshold?”

He took the lapels of her coat in his hands and pulled her in. Her smile up at him was anxious, and her eyes... This time he kissed her more seriously, in a pledge of good faith.

“You may be a demon now, but you are human at heart,” he said just as quietly.

Then from the recesses of his memory he pulled a spell he'd learnt from the grimoire Jenny had given him on the day she died. He put his hands on her face, his thumbs tracing the fine line of her cheekbones, and called her Anya, and whispered the words of heart-recognition. The night air shimmered, fire and grief and magic.

“There,” he said. “You'll be as human as I am. Er, for tonight. The rest of tonight.”

“Rupert, you don't get to take my power,” she said sharply.

“I didn't. It's still there.” He caressed her cheekbones one last time, then let go. “No one can take away what you have, Anyanka.”

She looked supremely dubious about this. Still, she was a trouper: she squared her shoulders, took his hand, and said, “Where do we go?”

He grinned at her. “Come along, I know a back way.”

“We've already done that joke,” she muttered, “and if you start singing I'm going to punch you,” but went with him into the narrow alley between the Council and the next edifice.

The backdoor was out of the light, just around the corner, set into the stone. He put his free hand on the lock and whispered the incantation that Ethan had taught him years ago – the rearrangement of the lock, the introduction of chaos into security. A little chaos, done when wide-awake, could be very useful...

The door swung open without a creak. But a dusty-dry voice said, “Who's there?”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Familiar names, books, libraries, kisses, and shadows.

“Oh hells,” Anyanka said.

She had had her doubts about this expedition before, but a check at this first barrier changed doubt to certainty: breaking-and-entering at the Council of Watchers was a terrible idea.

However, Rupert dropped her hand and moved forward anyway, stepping into the light. He made a soft, strangled noise but then said in a hearty voice, “Oh, good evening! Sorry, Travers, just dashing in for a volume from your library. Er, yes.”

She peered around the corner to see Rupert shaking hands with a stooped man in a dusty coat. The man didn't actually seem to _want_ to be shaking hands: “Do I know you, sir?” he said stiffly.

Rupert shrugged. “We've met, haven't we? Robert Giles. Just back from New York City. Posted to the Colonies some years ago in connection with the, um, Council efforts against the Clan of Marais.”

"Frenchies," the man muttered, “Frenchies and then Americans and vampires, pah. No standards.” He interrupted his mutterings, however, to survey Rupert more closely. “Robert Giles, eh? I do think we've met, but...”

“Time does change people,” Rupert said. “I've been away for, um, some time.”

The man continued to survey him, but widened his focus. “Yes. And who is that hovering in the doorway? And why couldn't you two use the front door, the proper channels...”

“Oh, right. Yes, well, yes.” Rupert reached back and grasped her hand before she could bolt out of sight. His grip was inescapable, and she blinked as he dragged her into the dusty but well-lit corridor. “Anna, this is, um, Geoffrey Travers of the Council. Travers, this is Anna MacDonald, my fiancee. Met her in New York.”

Damn him and his improvisation to the seven hells of Darba, she couldn't speak in an American accent at such short notice and without demonic powers. Still, she managed a smile and a nod of the head to this Travers person.

“I heard something about that,” Travers said disapprovingly. “But you still haven't--” He broke off, frowning, and stepped back. “No. You're not Robert Giles. Saw him in the bookroom last week. He's grown a moustache, and he's nowhere near as tall as--”

“Oh for fuck's sake,” Rupert snapped, and then threw a _beautiful_ punch at Travers's jaw.

The man fell with a most satisfying muted crash.

Nevertheless -- “Rupert,” she said in a piercing whisper, “You just hit someone!”

“Yes. Anyone named Travers is fair game. I threw his grandson against a wall once, it was richly deserved,” he said. “Now, Anya, if you could--?”

She opened the first door on the left – a cloakroom of some kind – and Rupert dragged the old man in, then arranged a couple of coats on top of him. Then he pushed her back out into the corridor and locked the cloakroom door behind him. “Right then,” he said, “servants' stairs are here.”

As they ascended the wooden stairs – as softly as they could – she kept stealing glances at him. So handsome a human he was, in his slightly worn fashion. Reckless and hot-tempered and not sensible sometimes, yes; flustered sometimes, yes. Kind to her, always. Scholar drinking tea, mage holding fire, pugilist, person who took up a great deal of bed, good singer, extremely fine kisser with every indication of being equally good at sex...

Something about him was teasing at her, something not quite clear enough to voice. Something inside her was flowering, had been long before he'd spoken that spell for her in the darkness outside.

When they reached the second floor, however, and he gestured toward the opening, she paused. Well, there he was. Rupert Giles.

She caught his punching hand and brought it to her lips. His knuckles were scraped. She kissed his wounds, hoping without hope to make them better. “I'm so sorry, Rupert,” she said, and she meant more than the scrapes.

“Anya.” His voice sounded more pained, not less. But he gently tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, and when she looked up, he was smiling. “Come on then.”

The upstairs hallway was thickly carpeted, and so they went quietly. She could hear Watchers in the building, from behind closed doors, but not many of them. Well, it _was_ late. Midnight would be upon them very, very soon.

She held onto Rupert more tightly, letting whatever mysterious process inside her work. Most men couldn't be trusted, but she thought he could get them where they needed to go.

He took her past three doors before he stopped. This door was smaller than the others, almost hidden. After he dropped her hand, he ran his fingers delicately over the door and keyhole, then whispered something she didn't catch. This door swung open too.

“Side door,” he said tersely.

They entered into the dimness between two freestanding walls of books. For a moment she thought she was trapped in that one Scribbling labyrinth (extra-dimensional, of course) where books like vampires could eat unwary travellers, but then... “We won't be dismembered by the books, right?” she whispered. “Or even made a little bloody?”

His chuckle was almost soundless. “No. Not unless one of us must deal with a papercut.”

“So what _are_ we doing?” she whispered.

He was scanning the near bookshelves, muttering to himself, “Corazon vampires, Corazon... There.” He plucked a newly bound volume off the top shelf, then smiled at her. “We're leaving Grandmother a note about William Pratt.”

“We're... what?” It was a struggle to keep her voice down.

Book in one hand, her in the other, he kept going. “Let me just--”

When they turned a corner, there was a small library desk waiting for them, complete with paper and pen. He let her go and set the book down. Quietly: “Grandmother will do her Watcher's thesis on the Barcelona-based Clan of Corazon – _heart_ in Spanish, how very odd – in 1905. I did a paper on her, you see, did the secondary research on her primary and secondary.... Right, anyway, according to library files she was the only person to use this particular reference.”

“Oh, I see. So you expect she'll read the note you write now--”

“And investigate properly.” He had already dipped his pen and begun writing on the nearest sheet of paper.

His handwriting was lovely cursive, but small and cramped – she hoped that his grandmother would be able to read it. She hoped further that... well, “If it's meant to be discovered, then it will be.”

He wrote for another minute, names and today's date and a few key phrases about William Pratt, and then put the pen back. Only then did he say softly, “The simplest spell, the fall of a sparrow, the flight of a single butterfly. Who knows.”

“Consequences,” she said, and the word lodged somewhere deep inside.

His eyes shone so green in the dimness. His well-cut mouth was very close. “Yes. Everything or nothing might change.”

“It's not a very comforting philosophy, not as tidy as vengeance,” she said absently, and then rose up and kissed that mouth, because he was real and he was laughing (she didn't know why) and he was there.

He tasted of comfort, even if he didn't speak it.

“Anya,” he said, and then she found herself on the library desk, her hands sliding off the sides, while he moved in, moved in so far she couldn't breathe, so close she could feel his cock pressing toward her through several layers. “Anya.”

“Rupert,” she said, and pulled him in.

She didn't know how long they were there. It was all too much, the solid body between her legs sliding under her thighs as she tried to get closer, the grinding hot and hard and perfect, the kisses down her neck and bites across the curves of her breasts, his hand wrapped in her hair to pull her back. It was not enough, not anywhere near enough.

But they woke to the reality of place and time when a voice far too nearby said querulously, “Where is Travers? He should have been here by now, how long does it take to fetch the Napoleon brandy from the storerooms.”

“Christ,” Rupert murmured, and pulled away. She had somehow lost her coat and her breasts had escaped their restraints as well, he was still much too clothed. His voice husky, he said even as he tried to put her back together, “Anya, much as I would like to hold you here until the Council falls away, I think we should get back.”

Her heart sank – it was a physical sensation, in fact, a painful folding in on itself. He _had_ to choose this of all times to exercise the good sense which had been so notably lacking in his most recent behaviour...but yes. Yes, it was a proof of his good faith. “Of course,” she said quietly, and finished clothing herself.

Rupert found the book which had somehow fallen to the floor, made sure the note was still there, and then helped her off the desk. Watcher-shadows were growing larger on the wall behind Rupert, shifting in between walls of books, and they did need to go.

She wanted to stay. She wanted him to stay. She wasn't going to have what she wanted.

On their way back through their book-alley, he shelved the book where he'd got it. At the small door leading to the hallway, however, he stopped her and whispered, “Er, Anya, I've never actually... um, do you think you could teleport us out of here?”

She frowned at him, but kept her own hissed reply quiet as well: “Are you crazy? Teleport out of the Council of Watchers, contending with wards and barriers and alarms and everything? I don't think it's even possible.”

"All right, just asking," he whispered back. “I'd no idea that the Council of Watchers was in essence Hogwarts and oh _Christ_ don't ask me what I mean, I'm horrified enough that I said it, I'm never talking to Dawn or Andrew again.”

“You've gone crazy again, poor man,” she said, and kissed his cheek, and opened the door herself.

They left the Council without further incident, even with Rupert stopping to unlock the door to the cloakroom where Travers lay. The cold air slapped her further awake. Time, no time, time, here in the dark cast by the Council Building in a gaslit night --

“Come here, Rupert,” she said, and wrapped her arms around him, and Wished through sudden fear.

London fluttered around them, a small butterfly, a great wind. But she had teleported for a millennium, although she'd never carried anyone along with her before. She held fast.

London stopped fluttering, and they were back in Cavendish's study.

Rupert looked so handsome, felt so solid, so... “You've lost your tie somewhere,” she said at random, and turned away before she revealed too much.

“Anya.” He put his hands on her shoulders – lightly now, however, easy to shrug off. She didn't shrug.

The long-case clock began to strike. It was only eleven, she knew. There was another hour to go, and then only work and a sunk heart would remain.... “Is there really a Robert Giles? And Anna?” she said, still grasping for conversation.

The long-case clock struck again. Three, four.

His hands tightened, then let go. She glimpsed those poor scraped knuckles out of the corner of her eye. But his voice was even and Watcher-like over the notes of the clock: “Why, yes. My great-grandfather on my paternal side. Anna MacDonald was the woman he brought back from America – a witch, some said. Magic from both sides, I reckon.”

Eight, nine. Only two strikes and an hour left.

She couldn't stand it. She couldn't _stand_ it. She whirled around on Rupert and opened her mouth to say something, anything, her good sense gone. She could do without him, but she didn't _want_ to.

Ten. Eleven. And from the interior of the long-case clock rose a shadow of a round face, twisted, ticking.

“Chronos!” she said. Oh hells.

When Rupert turned to look, the shadow grew arms, the shadow grew. Anyanka stepped forward with some vague notion of protecting Rupert--

Time reached out, and her world faded away.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the choice is made.

When Giles saw her fall, touched by the ticking shadow's hands, for a moment he was back in that nightmarish Sunnydale High corridor. “Anya,” he said, as he'd said that day when he'd turned the corner and seen the Bringer's sword coming down. “ _Anya_!”

He was already moving through smoke-shadow, already on his knees to her.

But this was now, 1880 not 2003, not 2009. His way was clear. Pale as any Pre-Raphaelite heroine, she lay not on a war-bloodied floor but on a crimson wool rug. When he put his hand to the pulse in her throat – she had a pulse there, more human than demon – her strong heart was beating. No injuries he could see.

Giles looked up. Above him hovered the shadow with the clock-face. Giles saw now that what he'd taken for his great-grandfather's initial at the twelve, three, six, and nine places were in fact clock faces themselves, on which were clock-faces....

“Chronos,” he said, and felt sick that he'd not realised before. Of course this room would have been where Great-grandfather had kept his bound demon. Chronos had watched him all afternoon.

The demon blew bitter-cold shadow at him, but Giles raised his hand and pushed it back. Where the shadow had touched, bloomed frostbite on his palm, bloomed cold inside. He pushed that away too.

“What have you done to her, Chronos?” he snapped, cradling Anya's head with his unhurt hand. “No, I don't care. Just undo it right the fuck now.”

“I cannot fully undo what you have done, man,” said the clock-shadow disapprovingly. “It is a paradox, a paradox, and I can only twist the threads so far.”

"A paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox" – the lines from that Pirates of Penzance tune seemed to echo from the corners of the study. Underneath, however, the world was shuddering, a low constant rumble.

It sounded like... Motors. Cars on the street outside the house. 2009, creeping into 1880.

Anya moaned. The sound broke Giles' contemplation, and he bent over her. But she didn't wake when his lips brushed hers. He didn't dare kiss her again. Too much cold.

The chill shadow crept closer, ticking, ticking. Chronos whispered in between the sharp little sounds, “She will not wake until you leave, and then....”

“Then what?” Giles said. He looked up at the round clock-face, saw the spinning hands, decided he didn't sodding care. “I didn't _change_ anything, for God's sake! Poor William Pratt died, just as I imagine he was fated to do. I didn't dust Angelus or Darla or Drusilla, I didn't get close enough to Great-grandmother for her to Wish--”

“You short-sighted fool, you're holding the one you've changed,” said Chronos. The clock-face darkened in a demonic glower. “You altered destiny from the moment you took her in your arms last night, Rupert Giles, and it's only got worse. Every touch, every damned exchange... twist, twist, twist.”

“Damned?” Giles said.

Tick, tick, tick. “It's an expression. I don't mean it literally. Probably.”

The distant rumble of 2009, motors and cables and fire, returned. Outside the study, footsteps, the hush of skirts – which stopped just at the door.

“John? Cousin Anya?” Great-grandmother said.

“Don't answer,” Chronos hissed, and that smoke-shadow hand came to hover over Giles' mouth.

Giles had no intention of answering, however. He wasn't the one Great-grandmother sought. Instead he closed his eyes and shifted his own hand around Anya's neck, so that his thumb rested against her pulse.

She had such a strong heart. Warmth travelled from their point of connection, up and in.

“Will she be all right?” he whispered.

“Which one of them?” Chronos said.

Distant rumble, getting louder. Great-grandmother's tears, softer as she went away.

Giles opened his eyes. “Anya,” he said, almost without thought. “Great-grandmother will be fine, eventually.” And then the blue plaque flashed into his consciousness, **John Rupert Cavendish – 1860-1881,** and he remembered at last his family history. Great-grandfather had not just moved from this Audley Street house: he'd died in 1881 before Grandmother was born, and Great-grandmother Amelia would go on to marry again...

“Yes, yes, yes,” Chronos said, tick, tick, tick. “Your great-grandmother, yes. Anyanka, well..." He paused, and the study went completely, utterly silent. Cold as the Poles, cold as old loves, cold as the valley in which a town lay dead and buried over a Hellmouth.

But under Giles' thumb, Anya's pulse sent warmth up and in, up and in.

“What would you give me, Rupert Giles, in order to keep your justice-demon safe?” Chronos said, and even though it couldn't have been more than five or ten minutes since Giles and Anya had come back here, now each word struck the hour of midnight, dark and deep. “You have already bled once for me -- my hand was on John Cavendish's as he cut your head. Bleed just once more, and say the words you've learnt, and I will see what I can do for you.”

Giles felt a tide of horrible yearning. If he made the connection and sacrifice, if Chronos sent him to a time where he could have Anya... Or more, if Chronos sent him to a time where some of the pain of the past ten years could be lost, could be changed, Buffy saved and the world made better, _and_ where he could have Anya, even if only for the year before Chronos' curse killed him --

Under Giles' thumb, her pulse began to speed. It was as if her entire body said, as she'd said to him before, _Don't wish, don't wish, don't wish._

No. It wouldn't be justice, after all, and that mattered to them both.

Chronos-clock kept tolling, although twelve had been struck. This wasn't time but dark magic, Giles thought, and he remembered now a candlelit room full of chaos-stink where a dead friend lay, he remembered not to trust in his own powers.

 _Don't wish, don't wish, don't wish_.

He bent down one more time, kissed her, breathed in jasmine, loved. “I will miss you more than you will know, darling,” he whispered. “But you never think of consequences, do you.”

Chronos laughed, Giles didn't know why.

Painfully he rose and went to Great-grandfather's desk, skirting Chronos as he went. Yet the shadow reached in anyway.

Giles felt smoke-fingers brushing frost and ashes over his forehead, felt aches left behind. He ignored them. “Time to go home,” he said to himself and to Chronos, “before I say to hell with it and stay.”

The _Tempus_ grimoire lay on top of the piles of paper he'd disarranged and rearranged during his hours here, with William Pratt's _Evanescence and Innocence_ manuscript almost touching it. Before he put his hand on the book, however, he said, “So, er, just as a point of curiosity: why did Great-grandfather want to go to 2009?”

“You'll never know,” Chronos said over one last toll of the hour. “Twist, twist, flight of a butterfly, fall of a Watcher, paradox resolved.”

Giles rested his cold-burnt hand on the grimoire and closed his eyes so that he didn't see what he left, so that he didn't see what he wanted.

The smoke-fingers reached inside head and heart, and the world became nothing but shudder and rumble, and the smoke-fingers found his memories and and broke them, and Giles fell and fell and fell through the shards of what was and what was no longer, until the time-door slammed and --

The clock tolled the last stroke of midnight, the lamps came on, and Giles awoke to find himself lying face-down on the heirloom rug in his study.

“What the bloody hell's wrong with you, nevvy?” said Spike from the doorway.

Giles rolled onto his back and pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. It didn't actually help -- “Can't remember. Just, er, fell asleep and fell over, I suppose.” He adjusted his glasses with his other hand and then glanced at Spike. “And just why are _you_ here, Great-uncle, instead of at Brighton with the others, killing the Goii?”

Spike sauntered a little further into the study. “Slayers have already slain our mini-Godzilla. They're just cleaning up the seaside now, but then our Dawn rang with a sighting of vamps in Camden, and, well...Buffy said I could, so I came back first.” He nudged Giles's shoulder with the toe of his boot. “Also, your better half has that gift for stocking your pantry. Thought I'd take a little burba.”

“You unutterable pillock, one would think the soul would stop you from those tricks,” Giles said wearily, and pushed himself up. The crimson rug on which he sat appeared to shimmer in front of his eyes for a moment, but then he blinked himself back to now. “I hope you didn't wake my, um, better half.”

"Of course he did. The charm I placed on the burba jar rang loud as anything when he attempted his theft,” Anya said sleepily, and he looked up to see her wrapped in his towelling robe, her hair tousled from their bed. “And, honey, then there was the weirdest noise, and then boom. Which was you hitting the floor, I guess--”

She bent over, inspecting him for damage. He tried to look innocent and unharmed for her survey, but the sight of her lovely breasts almost escaping the loosely tied robe got the best of him, and instead he tumbled her down into his lap. “Darling,” he said, and nuzzled into her neck, breathed in jasmine and love.

“Oi, a little respect for your elders,” Spike said, and nudged Giles again with his boot. “Have you no dignity? No decorum?”

“Sod off,” Giles said. “Actually, go home.”

“You can take the burba,” Anya said absently, her attention and her hands currently engaged on Giles's ears. “You owe us four pounds, however.”

“You can't charge family, Mrs Giles,” Spike said grandly. “And so I bid you both goodnight.”

As Spike stalked out the door with that idiotic flutter of coat, however, Giles called, “You're still coming by tomorrow to help with the family history, yes?”

Spike's voice came at a distance. “Yes, if it's cloudy – 's long as you remember I'm not your private secretary, nevvy.”

Giles laughed, even as he returned to the more pressing business of circling the pulse in Anya's neck with his tongue, tasting her presence, honouring that strong heart of hers...

“That tickles,” she said, wriggling on his lap in a way that encouraged thoughts of bed, of his playing with her breasts, of his opening her up and sinking in. But right, she was still talking: “Did that stupid family history of yours keep you up? Make you sick? Are you all right?”

He pulled away just far enough to gaze at her. She looked as lovely now, human and starting to age, as she had when she'd first walked into his library all those years ago – a vengeance-demon posing as a history teacher, there to investigate poor lost Jenny's independent attempts at justice for her clan. Yes, she looked as lovely as she had the night Jenny was murdered, when she had walked through the police line into his Sunnydale flat and helped him get through the pain; as lovely as she had when they'd helped each other through their mutual unemployment after D'Hoffryn and Travers had punished them both for challenging the proper order of things; as lovely as she had in their Sunnydale shop, which then had been swallowed up with the rest of the town.

The consequences and reward of love, he thought privately, but didn't say it because it was so ridiculously soppy.

His hands went to her face, held her there, caressed her cheekbones. “I'm utterly fine,” he said, smiling, and then kissed her to prove it.

She kissed back, as she always did – and as she often did, pulled away without warning. “You know I don't like having sex on this rug, it itches,” she said with a delicious pout. “Desk or bed?”

“Bed.” He kissed her again before helping her up. “Let me just clear away things here first. You might get out the cuffs, though, darling.”

She beamed. “Great! But I'll wait so you can put them on me,” she said, and then took off at her usual dizzying pace.

Smiling himself, he got to his feet. The study shimmered around him one last time, then settled.

It didn't take much to put everything in order – close the curtains on the Audley Street landscape below, as he'd done ever since he'd taken over the freehold from his cousin; tidy the notes for his monograph extending Grandmother Giles's work on the Clan of Corazon, and his and Spike's partially finished draft on Cavendish history. When he went to the doorway, however, he put his hand on the light switch and then paused.

There in the corner stood that long-case clock of his great-grandfather's. Giles had seen it a thousand thousand times, but for some reason tonight smoke and shadow curled around its round face.

And he found himself humming a happy little tune, which baffled him. Was that Gilbert and Sullivan, for fuck's sake? Why would he think of that?

“Strange,” he said to himself, and turned off the light.


End file.
